Examination of Witnesses (Questions 223-239)
19 NOVEMBER 2003
SIR BEN
GILL, MS
ELIZABETH HOGBEN
AND MR
BOB FIDDAMAN
Chairman: Good afternoon and thank you.
I think you have heard what I have just had to say. We have to
work on the basis that we only have around 20 minutes. I am sorry
that we will not be able to talk to you for longer, but I think
it does make for quick questions and snappy answers, which in
the end is a positive. Thank you for coming,
Q223 Joan Walley: We have heard just
now from the Soil Association quite a lot about the design of
the trials. We are a little bit concerned that in your memo to
us you said that you were not in a position to comment in detail
on the design of the farm scale evaluations. Could you tell us
why not?
Sir Ben Gill: First, it might
be helpful, Chairman, if I could just introduce the people with
me. I am Ben Gill, and I am President of the National Farmers'
Union of England and Wales. On my right is Bob Fiddaman who, aside
from being one of our key committee members, also is part of SCIMAC.
He is a person who conducted a trial on his farm. On my left is
Beth Hogben, who is our science adviser and the head of that particular
division. I will hand over to Bob Fiddaman to answer that point.
Q224 Joan Walley: In view of that
information, could I ask Mr Fiddaman whether or not it was because
he was already involved wearing another hat that the NFU were
not in a position to have any comment in detail on it?
Mr Fiddaman: Simply put, it was
because the NFU did not have any remit in designing the trial
or what information was to go in or come out of it.
Q225 Chairman: Is this yet another
organisation that is denying any involvement or any part of these
trials?
Mr Fiddaman: What the NFU was
asked to do, and I was one of those that encouraged it to happen,
was actually to try and find farmers who were prepared to host
the trials. Ours was one of those organisations that helped SCIMAC
actually deliver the number of sites that were required by the
Scientific Steering Committee.
Q226 Joan Walley: Surely, contributing
and taking part is one thing but the design is one step further
back. Any conclusions subsequently would be very much linked to
the design and yet you are not in a position to comment on the
design, although you were representing your own organisation on
SCIMAC.
Sir Ben Gill: The design of the
trials should be based on what is needed, from a scientifically
rigorous point of view, to obtain the results as determined by
the objectives of the trial. We are not qualified scientists.
Beth Hogben is a scientific adviser. It is therefore appropriate
that the people who are drawing up the trials and designing the
trials do so in accordance with the scientific needs as such.
We took part in SCIMAC and we actively embroiled ourselves in
seeking to encourage people to participate in the trials. In the
third year, we even advertised it in our own in-house magazine
to ask volunteers to come forward, but that is separate from the
actual design of the trials themselves.
Q227 Joan Walley: So you left the
design to scientists?
Sir Ben Gill: But we are not in
a position to know what degree of replication was needed; neither
were we in the driving seat to determine the questions that needed
to be answered. It was the Government that was driving this forward
and they would set the requirements for the trials, not ourselves.
Q228 Joan Walley: What role did the
industry have in that?
Sir Ben Gill: We took part in
SCIMAC, and Bob Fiddaman was part of that, to ensure that there
was an industry or supply chain initiative on modified agricultural
crops. That was actually to put some organisation and co-ordination
into that between the various sectors of the supply chain, which
ranges from the seed manufacturer, to the farmer, to the chemical
manufacturer, the whole chain indeed, and Bob Fiddaman was part
of that.
Q229 Joan Walley: You represent something
like 75% of farmers. Is that a fair view?
Sir Ben Gill: This is a much debated
figure. We represent about 75% of the productive capacity of England
and Wales farming.
Q230 Joan Walley: Did any of those
members make their views known to you about the design of the
trials?
Ms Hogben: I was not employed
by the NFU at the time, but obviously our members have a great
deal of interest in farm-scale trials.
Q231 Joan Walley: I am talking about
the design specifically?
Ms Hogben: None that I am aware
of.
Sir Ben Gill: And I am not aware
of any.
Q232 Joan Walley: Did you write or
e-mail or use newsletters to invite your members to make any comments
about the design?
Sir Ben Gill: As I have already
said, the purpose of the trials was to conduct a scientific evaluation
of any environmental consequences of growing GM crops. That was
a scientific evaluation that required scientific expertise on
how the trials should be designed and replicated. That is not
and never has been part of our skill or our remit.
Q233 Joan Walley: In terms of science,
when you define science, would you include that as science for
the earth as opposed to science dictated by industry?
Sir Ben Gill: Science is the understanding,
in our case, of biological systems in their entirety, which includes
the soil, if that is what you are referring to by "the earth",
and everything that is grown above it, both animal and plant.
We obviously have an active interest in the interpretation of
that science in practical, everyday use and exploitation.
Q234 Joan Walley: Just going back
to the previous session that we had with the Soil Association,
quite a lot was made about yields and the tensions between the
yields and the trials themselves. Do you think that your members
would have found the trials more realistic if yields had been
included?
Mr Fiddaman: Obviously the short
answer is always "yes" because as a farmer if you are
looking to a new technology, you want to see what the potential
profitability is. It was not set up within those trials because
the sites that were chosen were not chosen on whether they were
good yield sites; that was done on the basis of whether they provided
the right background from which the scientists wished to draw
these sites, and they were drawn from a list rather than pre-selected
or anything like that. Therefore, I do know, for example, that
I actually did some rough estimates of yields on my own farm because
I did six trials, three sets of spring trials and three sets of
winter trials. The only mechanism for doing it is actually through
our combine. We do not have a block combine which has all the
added advantages of weighing machines and so on for distances
and the right measuring techniques. It was never the intention
of the trials that were set up that that was going to be an advantage.
We were able to do a very rough basis on yield, not least because
I wanted to see whether the technology might show a benefit.
Q235 Joan Walley: Finally, with the
benefit of hindsight, if you were sitting with your other hat
on now planning the trials, would you consult members of the NFU
as to how the trials should be carried out?
Sir Ben Gill: The aspect of the
construction of the trials themselves, the design, is something
specifically for the person who is in charge of what is an experiment.
Q236 Joan Walley: But it is linked
to commercial growing, is it not? If there is a position where
there is going to be commercial growing, yields and all these
other issues, it is important that decisions can be made on the
basis of the trials.
Sir Ben Gill: Perhaps I misunderstood
the question. If you are referring to design rather than physical
construction, should we have included other factors to be the
outputs from the trials, of course there would have been the potential
to have had as holistic or as broad a picture outcome as possible,
but the specific raison d'e®tre for establishing the
trials was not to establish yield or benefit—that was determined
by Government—but it was indeed to determine whether or
not there was any environmental interaction, simply and purely.
Q237 David Wright: Mr Fiddaman, can
I clarify this? You did some loose measurements about yield. Could
you repeat what you said on that in terms of what the impact was
you felt on yield? It was your land and you farm it regularly.
Did you also get any other informal feedback for many other participant
farmers in relation to how they felt performance went in terms
of yield?
Mr Fiddaman: I only grew the oilseed
rape crop, which was one where it was actually easier to get yield
because it is the one crop that is taken off the farm in bags
to be disposed of. The lorries that took that were totally weighed,
so you had an idea then of what the lorry was carrying. That is
how I was able to check back through to get a rough confirmation
of yield. Obviously for my own crops on farm that I retain I also
do a yield measuring, so that gives me some confidence as to what
I was able to do. I am aware that there are other oilseed rape
growers who were able to do the same activity. The general impression
that I gained over the three years of the actual trials, although
it involved four years, was that there was at least 10% potential
benefit on the GM side.
Q238 David Wright: What was the biodiversity
impact in your view?
Mr Fiddaman: From my view, I thought
that there was potentially a better biodiversity in the GM crop
up until certainly the point you sprayed; post-harvest, you could
really tell very little difference between either side of the
field which had been the GM crop and which had been the non-GM.
Q239 Sue Doughty: I think I too am
getting slightly confused about what these experiments are doing.
I quite take the point that these are scientific experiments,
but one would have expected that normal farming practice is to
farm for as near maximum yield as possible. That is why you are
in business. Yet somehow that question does not seem to have been
asked very much. I think this is again why we are going back to
it: why was that question not asked and why was it not felt important
to build in typical farming practices, which are there designed
to get maximum yield and to keep the farmers in business? Was
this actually skewed to get a result that you wanted to see as
opposed to normal farming practice?
Mr Fiddaman: The short answer
is that there was a series of questions that you are not aware
of that was actually done in the process of selecting the sites.
The farmers were asked actually to give their experience of how
they grew the crop previously because no trial could take place
on a farm that had not already grown that crop, whether it was
sugar beet, maize or rape. They had previous commercial experience.
How they had done it and also their average yield were collected
data. The scientists themselves had a background as to how that
farmer farmed, whether it was, if you like, more intensively or
less intensively than the average. The sites were chosen by the
scientists to reflect what information they wanted to collect.
I understand that there was a bigger emphasis on those that were
tending to be more ICM, LEAF-type, farms which were more environmentally
looking and therefore perhaps not the highest yield growers; they
were in the trial but they did not form the higher percentage
of the total trials that were taking place.
Sir Ben Gill: I think it is also
important to understand that for any crop that we grow, before
crops are put on the market, they go through national list evaluations.
These evaluations are to determine factors such as yield, disease
resistance and so on. These yield factors are then published on
a national league table to allow an individual farmer to decide,
on the basis that a variety has been approved for use, which ones
are best suited to his individual situation. Yield is a major
factor but not the sole determinant of that because disease resistance,
pest resistance, ability to drill at abnormal times of the year
or out of normal season patterns, frost resistance and other factors
come into determining that. Those are all a given. The purpose
here was simply to look at the environmental interactions before
it ever is approved that we are going to use a GM crop, and then
of course there would be no sense in using it unless there was
(a) a demand from the market place and (b) also a financial pay-back
in that operation.
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