Examination of Witnesses (Questions 44
- 59)
WEDNESDAY 28 JANUARY 2009
PROFESSOR JOHN
BEDDINGTON
Q44 Chairman:
Ladies and gentlemen we welcome Professor John Beddington, the
Government's Chief Scientific Advisor. Thank you very much for
making time to come and talk to us and also for your thought provoking
written evidence which is certainly very interesting. Our last
witness challenged us and in fact I think challenged the government
about the definition of what we mean by food security and I look
back through your own written evidence, which picks up on a lot
of the issues we are going to be discussing which, if you like,
address the question of food security but it does not itself actually
define what we mean by food security. So in writing your submission
to us was there a definition that was in your mind that you were
addressing when you put your thoughts on paper?
Professor Beddington: I missed
Professor Lang's discussions with you, I am afraid. I see this
as operating at a number of different dimensions. My first response
to this is that I think we have at the global level a genuine
issue of world food shortage, the problem of can you feed nine
billion people by 2050 in some form of equitable and sustainable
way? I think that is at the world level. There are obviously additional
operational definitions, for example the food security within
a particular state of the UK, about what are the food security
issues there. I think it still is the case whether you can feed
the UK population in a sustainable and equitable way. The questions
then come out as whether in fact does that mean that we produce
all our own food and I would argue that no, it does not, but we
need to have some issues. So I think at a global level we are
genuinely challenging whether enough food can be produced given
the constraints of climate change, water shortage, energy demands
and so on, and that is a genuine issue. Within the UK the argument
has been that we are a relatively prosperous country and can go
on to the world market to buy things and so therefore total self
reliance on food is not an issue and there are debates to be had
around that.
Q45 Chairman:
I understand what you say and I was going to ask you about the
scientific challenges of feeding nine billion people and that
will come out in the course of our questions, but let me just
remind you what Defra, who are in the lead on this, have actually
said in terms of their definition of food security. What they
say is the government's definition of UK food security is for
people to have access at all times to sufficient, safe, sustainable
and nutritious food at affordable prices so as to help ensure
an active and healthy life. You are a scientist, you are used
to dealing with precision in terms of terminology and definitions
are a very important part of the world in which you operate. Is
that a precise enough definition from the point of view of arranging
the science to support its achievement?
Professor Beddington: No, I think
one would have to interpret it in some form of quantitative way.
I think as an operational definition one could arguably use it
as a guideline but once you actually got into detail you would
have to query questions about affordability; you would have to
raise questions about healthy nutrition and things of that sort.
But that is the issue.
Q46 Chairman:
You have put down a little list of things that it needs probing
about and you are very heavily involved in the government's efforts
now to address this issue, so are those the kinds of questions
that as the Chief Scientist you are asking of others as you try
to define work programmes to address the issue?
Professor Beddington: I can either
do it now or describe a bit later the programmes we are involved
in.
Q47 Chairman:
I think we are going to come on to some of those but I mention
this definition.
Professor Beddington: If we stay
on the definition we really need to be asked operational definitions
and to anticipate the sort of issues that I raised on a global
basis of what do we mean by equitably, what do we mean by sustainably?
These are things that do properly need to be explored and looked
at. The definition that Defra has given you needs filling out
and actually posing the question in an appropriate and quantitative
way. I have not done that in any detail, but we are embarking
on programmes to try and take that forward.
Q48 Chairman:
Let us park that one for the moment because you opened your remarks
by quite rightly reminding the Committee that the challenge is
how by 2050 we were going to feed nine billion people, and that
requires a doubling, according to the target set at the FAO in
June last year, of the world's food production. Looking at the
information that is currently available to you as a scientist,
do you believe that the world has the potential to increase its
production to meet that demand and thereafter sustain that production
for whatever you like to define as the foreseeable future?
Professor Beddington: If you are
asking for a view my view would be yes, but it is going to be
a yes with a very large "but", because there are some
very significant constraints that the science and technology and
indeed the policy is not developed to address. I would highlight
two factors which were actually going together with that particular
question. One is in fact climate change and how that is actually
going to operate between now and that time period and there are
major indications of serious disruption to food supplies, particularly
due to changes in rainfall and to a slightly lesser extent, I
would argue, changes in temperature. The second issue really related
to that is that there are, I think, enormously serious problems
to do with the availability of water and the changing distribution
of water that is expected through climate change and also the
anthropomorphic generations. There is a very, very large movement
of urbanisation—2008 was the first time that the urban population
exceeded the rural for the world population as a whole—and
I think that that urbanisation and the requirements that urban
communities have for fresh water is going to be a problem. As
I am sure the Committee knows, something like 70% of available
fresh water is used by the agricultural industry at the moment,
so how are we going to do it? The challenge is enormous. Putting
it in almost a sound bite form the challenge for agriculture is
to grow more food—something of the order of 50% in the next
two decades and doubling in four decades—on less land because
of various factors, urbanisation, climate change and so on, with
less water, and because there are other issues to do with climate
change and related health issues probably using less fertiliser
and less pesticides than we have historically done. So it is an
enormous challenge but I think it is one that if we actually focus
on the science and technology and take the food security issue
as seriously and in an inter-related way with the climate change
issue and not ignore one to the exclusion of the other then there
is a possibility, but that is part of the foresight project that
I have started; it is part of a number of studies around the world
that we will be wanting to look at. My belief is that to solve
the problem we have to look to science and technology.
Q49 Chairman:
Can I therefore ask you about risk profiling because you have
described a number of long term phenomena that are going to affect
the ability of the world to feed itself up to 2050 and it strikes
me that the more you ask the world's agricultural systems to produce
more and more so the risk factors rise because if you do not have
much headroom or slack in the system then if something goes wrong
the events could be catastrophic. Is there an exercise that is
being done amongst the scientific community to relate the passage
of time to the risk profiling that affects whether you can actually
achieve and sustain this long term, very large increase in the
amount of food that we are going to need as a planet?
Professor Beddington: That would
be very much a topic of discussion with the foresight team that
we put together. I expect the risk profiles will be examined on
these various decadal things because the risk will operate and
we need to be thinking about mechanisms whereby there is adjustment
to unpredictable factors. For example, if climate change is moving
rather faster than we had thought, as I think we discussed when
I was last in front of this committee, we have got to think hard
about how those constraints are being built up. But, quite clearly,
your point, I accept, is that we have got to not just do some
sort of assessment of averages and likelihoods, we have got to
actually think about what those risks are. One I have characterised
is the very recent food spike in the period 2007-2008. I think
discussions vary on what are the most important factors, but,
quite clearly, any analysis would indicate that the reduction
in global reserves of some of the key grains, and so on, has got
to have had an important effect, as you have no buffering of food
prices. So one of the things that one would use to actually address
the risk profile is to be asking questions such as: can you build
up better and more adequate and more appropriately sized reserves
of key commodities?
Q50 Chairman:
One of the things that politicians do not do very well is long-term.
I just wonder, given the long-term nature of the exercise that
the scientific community is currently embarking on in dealing
with some of the issues that you have outlined, what assurances
have you had from the Government of the day that they have put
in place mechanisms that will enable the work programmes that
you are identifying to actually be sustained over the long-term,
particularly from a financial point of view, but also to make
certain that you have put in place the mechanisms that will see
the job through and not be sacrificed because somebody says, "Oh,
well, we have not had a problem for the last couple of years,
so it is all right, is it not?"
Professor Beddington: I think
your point is a good one. First of all, I think that the food
security issue is clearly an international one. The UK, just as
the UK, has an important contribution to make, as I think Tim
Lang was arguing just before I arrived, but one has got to be
thinking about mechanisms in the international community. For
example, the Department for International Development working
with the CGIAR system is an example.
Q51 Chairman:
Can you tell us what CGIAR is?
Professor Beddington: I really
wish you had not asked me that, Chairman. Consultative Group—
Q52 Chairman:
You can phone a friend. What is the audience's answer?
Professor Lang: Consultative International
Agricultural Group for Research. It is 15 research stations.
Q53 Chairman:
I think you owe him a pint for that actually!
Professor Beddington: Yes, but
G follows C, so I am not sure, I think it may not be accurate.
Give me one second, Chairman, and I can tell you from my enormous
brief.
Q54 Lynne Jones:
Just tell us what it is rather than what it is called?
Professor Beddington: Okay. It
is a group of internationally funded research organisations that
are based in the developing world. For example, one example of
it is the WorldFish vehicle, which deals with aquaculture and
fisheries. There is one that deals with rice, there is one that
deals with wheat, there is one that deals with animal husbandry
and there is a group of these. There have been some developments,
which I could mention, but there has been some concern that these
have not been working together as well as one might have hoped,
but there have been significant developments which DFID have been
involved in with actually getting an overall council for these
organisations to work together and be rather more integrated and
related. I will write to you, Chairman, rather than delay the
committee with what CGIAR is, rather than fluster through my brief
to try and give it you exactly.
Q55 Chairman:
That is very kind. Finally, before I hand over to Lynne Jones,
one of things I know you are doing is a cross-government group
to strengthen the coherence and co-ordination of food research
across the public sector.
Professor Beddington: Yes.
Q56 Chairman:
But I am very conscious that the provision and the supply of food
in the United Kingdom is very much in the corporate private sector
at the present time and that in that sector they too sponsor a
great deal of scientific research. Are you in any way trying to
combine the public and private research effort to ensure complementarity
and to reduce overlap?
Professor Beddington: The answer
is, yes, I am acutely conscious of it. Indeed, I was meeting with
Marks and Spencer only this morning to discuss some of these issues.
As you know, they have a fairly substantial food and green food
agenda. What we are doing is this. I believe there is scope for
what I would term a Food Research Partnership, which would be
a forum where all the players, including government agencies and
the private sector, would be able to explore what are the priorities
that are needed for research in food and to ensure that complementarity
that is obviously desirable is there. I am modelling it on work
that my predecessor put together called the Energy Research Partnership.
That is actually rather easier in energy, because in energy you
have very major oil companies, utility companies, and so on, so
there are fewer players, but the food research partnership will
be more complicated to do. My aim is that we will have stakeholders
from the industrial sector sometimes, for example, representatives
of the retail trades, clearly the NFU, clearly representatives
from major corporations like Syngenta, and so on. We are hoping
to have our first meeting in March and I see this as part of the
development under the Cabinet Office Taskforce, on which I am
leading the work on research, to take this forward. We have had
an initial meeting where this was discussed, and we have gone
as far as specifying which of the stakeholder groups we are planning
to invite to this meeting at the moment, but I completely accept
the committee's point. There is no point trying to do government
research if you are not closely linked into the key players in
industry, and I do not mean just in the productive sector; I think
we have got to think about the retail and the branding sectors
as well.
Q57 Lynne Jones:
You have highlighted the importance of science for dealing with
the challenges ahead in relation to food production for a growing
population. Yet public research into food and farming has been
declining since the mid eighties. Is that decline coming to a
halt, and what are the prospects for a substantial increase in
spending? I noticed in your submission you said that DFID is allocating
a large budget towards agricultural research; in fact it seems
to be proposing to spend far more then Defra, which I was quite
surprised at. Is the situation improving? What needs to be done
to improve the situation?
Professor Beddington: Certainly,
I would agree. I will answer your question in two parts. Certainly
I would endorse that there has been a significant decline, and
if you take out the animal welfare and animal health agenda, that
decline is even greater. I think that is unfortunate. That is
mirrored throughout the world, unfortunately. World Bank spending
on agricultural research, similarly, declined very substantially
in this period and in the developing world. I hope, as I have
been arguing with my colleagues in Defra, that this will be turned
round, and I believe that there should be an increase in spending
on appropriate agricultural research. I do not think the current
situation is satisfactory. Of course, this is not the ideal time
to be talking about major new investment because of the problems
in financial services, but I believe this is sufficiently important
that we should be looking to see an increase, and that is certainly
the case that I will be taking up with my colleague Bob Watson
in Defra and will be taking up with Defra ministers.
Q58 Chairman:
Yesterday I sat and listened to a statement where the Government
said that motor cars with greener futures seem to be worth investing
some billions of pounds in. Are you not saying that the same priorities
attach to investment in all of the huge challenges that you enumerated
in your opening remarks, which is going to affect the production
of food? That seems to be a very good thing to be spending money
on at this time, does it not?
Professor Beddington: Yes. I think
there are some complications about that analogy, but in terms
of the amount of spending that one would put on food, I think
it should be significantly increased. I think the point about
electric cars is that there is a major potential for exports first,
the technology develops, you actually have climate change benefits,
and so on, which is slightly beyond what the food is.
Q59 Lynne Jones:
Surely that applies to the food sector. When we are talking about
a current budget of 29 million, even to double it is peanuts in
relation to what we are talking about in other sectors.
Professor Beddington: I would
not disagree with that, and if we thought about the science budget
as a whole, arguments could be made along those lines given the
amount of money that has gone into the financial sector. Taking
the food, I think 29 million is not—
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