Examination of Witnesses (Questions 380
- 399)
WEDNESDAY 18 MARCH 2009
MR ANDREW
WOOD
Q380 Chairman:
Who within the European Union do you see as Britain's natural
allies in following the proposals that you have just espoused?
Mr Wood: To some extent the northern
European countries are the most obvious ones. I am no expert on
the politics of the EU but the position of the French in relation
to agriculture is quite well known. In Mediterranean countries
they have typically over a long time pursued subsidy and eastern
European countries, coming into it anew, to some extent are a
clean sheet of paper. Whilst they might well want to modernise
their production and certainly have the capability to produce
more than they are currently producing, there is an opportunity
for a debate there that does lead you to a win-win, so there are
some allies but we need to recognise there is opposition too.
Q381 Chairman:
Are there any parallel organisations to Natural England in other
parts of the European Union that you are aware of or have contact
with?
Mr Wood: There are, yes, typically
in the countries I have just described.
Q382 Chairman:
Those are your mates.
Mr Wood: We hope so, yes. We have
particularly good relationships with the Germans and the Dutch.
Q383 Chairman:
Some might argue that if we do maximise the potential biodiversity
the consequences are that we are not going to produce as much
theoretically as we could; therefore we are exporting our biodiversity
challenge to somebody else because you might say they will produce
it and they may have to go hell for leather for the production;
we are a relatively rich country, we can buy their product, so
that is all right then, so you can have degradation somewhere
else and we are sitting here thinking in a nirvana of perfection
that we have done our bit for biodiversity but actually we have
a negative account somewhere else. How does that argument play
with Natural England?
Mr Wood: Not very well. Biodiversity
perfection, if it does exist, in this country would look like
this country quite a long time ago. I do not think anybody, least
of all Natural England, is arguing for that, Chairman, and we
certainly do not believe that we should export our problems elsewhere.
We currently produce about 60% of our own food and that is a reasonably
sustainable model. We have food chains that take us largely into
Europe as well and to some extent further afield. To suggest that
we return vast tracts of currently agricultural land into some
restored wilderness is wishful thinking on the part of the slightly
more extreme environmentalists because we could not sustain 60
million people like that.
Q384 Chairman:
In terms of the arguments that, for example, were put forward
in May and June last year, where clearly there was a recognition
that there was going to have to be more agricultural production,
particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and the southern hemisphere,
there are some potentially very major environmental degradation
issues that arise. The Committee, for example, is planning to
go to Brazil to try and learn more about them, but how should
the Government here respond to that type of challenge when in
fact it may in equal measure be looking to, for example, Brazilians
to produce more food, for which we might ultimately end up being
a customer?
Mr Wood: The Brazilians need to
produce food for their own population first and we are in a position
to help them with that. If you step outside of the comparatively
limited bits of intensive production in countries like Kenya producing
cut flowers and miniature sweetcorn that tastes of nothing, you
have agriculture that is almost as far removed as you can get
from intensive. They could move a long way, they could increase
their yields a great deal with help from us in a way that did
not do significant damage to their natural environment. That is
the space that we should occupy.
Q385 Lynne Jones:
You discussed earlier the need to change our diets and there was
also the issue about the sustainability of our food and food safety.
These responsibilities are within different departments in government.
Do you think that these structures' current set-up is adequate
or have you got any ideas about whether there should be some restructuring
so that perhaps one department is responsible for all these aspects
of our food production and consumption?
Mr Wood: The evidence of Defra's
success so far—in so far as it has been successful—has
been that bringing issues together works and makes a difference.
Current divisions around food are largely as between food production
and issues to do with health; I do not think I would argue for
the Balkanisation of the Department of Health but I think that—I
apologise I resort to cliché at this point—joined-up
government is plainly absolutely critical around this. If we are
to persuade people out of current bad habits that are bad for
their health, that are ultimately bad for society as a whole and
for the environment, then we need to do that alongside an understanding
of food in the round, whether that is packaging, supply chains,
transportation or the impacts of climate change as a result of
that or food production per se.
Q386 Lynne Jones:
Have you any ideas about how that could be improved? Is it sufficiently
joined up at the moment?
Mr Wood: No, and it very rarely
is. Apologies, my personal experience of this sort of thing is
having worked for some years in the NHS where the first resort
rather than the last resort is to reorganise. No reorganisation
ever produces the right answer because there is not a right one:
there are a series of compromises, so I do not think big structural
change is necessarily the answer here. What the Civil Service
and the public service more generally are crying out for, and
in some places have had some of, is cultural change, a change
that moves people away from an assumption that knowledge is power
and therefore I am more powerful if I do not tell you what I know,
into an assumption that is about openness and sharing. You cannot
compel that by making people work in the same room together. You
can begin to encourage it by ensuring that we talk to each other.
I know that sounds like it might take a long time, and I suspect
it will, but in the end, in government and in most other areas,
hearts and minds works a lot better than compulsion.
Q387 Lynne Jones:
But how are you going to bring that about? It is all very well
saying that. You have said that it is not joined-up at the moment,
you are not advocating any restructuring, and you just seemed
to say, "Well, there needs to be a culture change."
How is that to be brought about?
Mr Wood: I think it can be brought
about by those of us who inhabit more integrated worlds setting
an example. I think it can be brought about by beginning to develop
a common narrative so that we have shared objectives. Natural
England is caricatured very often, sometimes a bit fairly and
sometimes not at all, as having a sort of Punch and Judy relationship
with the NFU, but the truth of the matter is that we do business
with the NFU and its membership on a daily basis. We talk to each
other a lot and we slowly move our way to shared objectives. We
do not agree about everything, we never will—that is the
nature of life—but you can demonstrate that it can happen.
The experience so far with the Department for Energy and Climate
Change strongly suggests that simply reorganising and doing some
badge engineering does not make a fundamental difference in anything
like the short term.[43]
Q388 Lynne Jones:
Do you have any specific recommendation that we could make on
this point in our report?
Mr Wood: I do not think I came
here prepared to offer you a recommendation on structural change;
I am sorry—the department, certainly, by giving weight to
the newly created Council of Food Advisers, by giving them prominence.
I would suggest that expanding them—because their membership,
which is the great and good, as is traditional in Whitehall, lacks
a lot of practitioners (it has a former president of the NFU but
no current members, for example)[44]—could
make a difference. That could give the issue prominence and it
could begin to drive an agenda that is around bringing people
together. I think, also, that we do need to get back to something
we touched on in passing earlier, which is the scientific base
and the research base for all of this, and we could invest more
in common programmes rather than every department pursuing its
own particular interest. We could use the good offices of the
Chief Scientist to drive that much more intelligently.
Q389 Lynne Jones:
What about the responsibilities of the food chain, the food manufactures
and retailers in this area?
Mr Wood: We plainly need them
to be more responsible than they are now. We have seen interesting
changes in the very recent past which show that they are prepared
to accept responsibility for what they do. The reduction in giving
away of plastic bags, just as an obvious example, makes a genuine
difference. Plainly they are in business to look after their shareholders,
their profitability, and they will inevitably chase that, but
accreditation of foods, better labelling, are all things that
they could do. If I step entirely outside the bounds of the current
discussion, we need to think better about logistics and the infrastructure
that supports that. We have the inanity of goods being shipped
into this country on the Humber being trucked across the Midlands
to distribution centres in Gloucestershire and then trucked back
to Newcastle. I am sure that is serving somebody's purpose but
it does little good to the general public and less to the natural
environment. The notion of short sea shipping, which those of
us of a certain age would think of as coastal freight, has a part
to play in this: lower carbon emissions, less congestion, and
goods delivered more promptly to where people want to use them.
Retailers and manufacturers have a part to play in that sort of
debate.
Q390 Lynne Jones:
You have given us an example, if you like, where there has been
responsible behaviour in terms of the plastic bags and then irresponsible
behaviour. What are the mechanisms for encouraging those in the
supply chain and retailers to move towards more sustainable production?
What are the driving forces to make them behave better, do you
think? Is that something in which the Government has a role to
play or is it something that we leave entirely up to them as to
what they think they need to do to market their products?
Mr Wood: At the risk of trivialising
the whole debate, one answer is plainly Delia Smith. We should
not underestimate the power of an intervention from somebody like
that who says, "Eat this, rather than that". In the
days when The Archers was still used as the frontispiece
of the Ministry of Agriculture, we used to do some of those things.
Government clearly has a role to play in better health education
for the general public. The public will respond to that ultimately
and demand different things from their suppliers, and suppliers
will be incredibly responsive to that. If Delia can be on television
one day and speak in favour of cranberries and Tesco and Sainsbury's
can be out of stock two days later, they will respond to that
sort of thing, and they will respond to sensible discussion about,
for example, sustainable fish stocks. We have watched big supermarket
chains move steadily away from unsustainable production when it
comes to fish.
Q391 Lynne Jones:
A bit earlier you were talking about the need to shift from meat
and dairy. Are there any other foods that have a high environmental
impact?
Mr Wood: All food has a high environmental
impact but in large part the strength of that goes to how you
produce it and you have choices about how you produce it. Foods
that demand a lot of fertiliser, a lot of pesticide, have a greater
impact than those that do not. I think it might be better to look
at it from the other way round and look at foods that have both
a lower environmental impact and on which the consensus is that
they are better components of a healthy diet. We have grubbed
up great tracts of traditional orchard in this country over the
last 30 or 40 years, but traditional orchards (a) provide fruit,
which is a key component of a healthy diet, and (b) do wonders
for the natural environment in terms of their support for invertebrates
and other species. Traditional orchards had a diversity of species
within them and we have moved away from traditional English apples
and pears into an ever narrowing range of species that we are
prepared to eat. Big retailers bear some responsibility for that
again. Simply by restoring some of that you could make a difference.
Q392 Lynne Jones:
What would be the driving forces as regards that and to restore
orchards?
Mr Wood: Again, incentives could
work for that. The current package of incentives does not play
particularly well in that area. The changes we are making in 2010
will make a start, but only a start. We could incentivise that
much better. The appropriate labelling and promotion of local
foodstuffs, which is something we did ten years ago or so, plainly
makes a difference. That is something that the state could contribute
to rather than the market. Ultimately—and again I go back
to Delia—educating people's tastes makes a huge difference.
Q393 Lynne Jones:
Would that cost? Would people have to pay more for food produced
in a more sustainable way?
Mr Wood: No, not necessarily.
The inputs tend to be less, so you do not have those costs. You
might have to incentivise it for a time. Certainly, if we are
talking about orchards, apple trees take time to grow.
Q394 Lynne Jones:
Who would pay for the initial planting?
Mr Wood: I have suggested now
that agri-environment schemes could conceivably. Certainly if
we made the shift from Pillar 1 to Pillar 2 that we advocate,
you would have a ready source of funds.
Q395 David Taylor:
Can we turn, please, to research and development? We have the
interesting submission made by Natural England, but in your section
"Science, knowledge and technology"[45]
at paragraphs 4.6, 4.7 and 4.8 there is no reference to GMs. It
is a bit like a discussion of football that does not include Manchester
United, or an anthology of great Lancashire Conservatives that
does not include the Chairman. That is how to ingratiate yourself
in this place! Could you give us the views of Natural England
on the use of GMs? It was an odd sort of omission, I thought.
Mr Wood: GM potentially has a
role to play. We believe that. We believe that GM research in
principle is not a bad thing. We believe it carries risks with
it and it behoves us to be careful. I need to be careful here
because Natural England is a licensing authority for GM releases,
so I must not prejudge any particular issue, but with the right
precautions GM trials can be made to work. If they can be made
to work and robustly demonstrate they have a contribution to play
that does not damage the natural environment, then there is no
need to stop that development from going ahead.
Q396 David Taylor:
You will recall the framework of the whole inquiry was predicated
on global food production being increased by 50% before 2030 and
being doubled by 2050. Is such a scale of increased volumes possible,
do you think, without some contribution from GM?
Mr Wood: I challenged earlier
the scope—
Q397 David Taylor:
Did I miss that?
Mr Wood:— and I will pass
on from that. There is no reason in principle why it should not
be possible without GM. Again, if you simply look at the lessons
of history, we increased production many-fold through technological
advances before anybody had thought of GM. There is no reason
why we should not achieve something similar again, but GM is an
available technology and used with proper caution could have a
part to play.
Q398 David Taylor:
In the final paragraph of your section "Science, knowledge
and technology" you talk about opportunities to develop our
knowledge of smaller scale agricultural systems. Are you suggesting
that the research at that level at the moment has been inadequate
or not received sufficient priority either here or elsewhere?
Mr Wood: Yes. We know what we
know on the basis of the small-scale pieces of research on particular
sites, particular systems. No one has looked across the piece
to see what contribution this could make on a much larger scale
and we badly need to do that.
Q399 David Taylor:
How can our government or governments, working collectively, perhaps
through the EU, encourage and catalyse such research? If it has
not happened naturally in recent years to the extent that you
feel is necessary, how can it happen? It is not just a matter
of throwing money at it, is it?
Mr Wood: Government here plainly
has leverage on the research councils and it should use it. Bodies
like Natural England, but not only us, exist at least on the edges
of the scientific community. My colleague, our Chief Scientist,
exists in the middle of them, and we should certainly bring influence
to bear. Ultimately, where private sector drivers will not deliver
this, government's role is to step in. We create and support governments,
largely for reasons of security, and if we believe that food security
is an issue then government plainly has a part to play. Our research
funding in those areas we still fund publicly has gone down progressively
over many years now, and there is no reason why we should not
step into this space. If you look simply at the money that Defra
spends currently on R&D, which is about £22 million in
the current year, there is no reason why some of that should not
be redirected towards this sort of issue.
43 Witness amendment: According to a story
in The Times a few days ago. Back
44
Witness amendment: (it has a former Chairman of the Meat
and Livestock Commission but no current members, for example) Back
45
Ev 145 Back
| 
