Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 99)
WEDNESDAY 11 JULY 2007
Dr Mark Avery, Dr Sue Armstrong-Brown and Mr Harry
Huyton
Q80 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
So you are assuming that some Member States would support their
agriculture differently from ours?
Dr Armstrong-Brown: I think it is very likely,
although that is my opinion rather than a fact. But people who
argue very strongly against reform may do so partly because at
the moment there is no cost to the State from Pillar I payments,
apart from what they are contributing to the overall budget. If
that state had to contribute part of the cost of Pillar I payments
but Pillar II payments were less restricted in that way—that
would help remove the brake on Pillar II payments, caused by having
to co-finance them at the moment, with the policy weight now falling
on the objectives serviced by Pillar II—would it not make
more sense to make that easy to be delivered through European
funding streams and, if the Member States strongly wished to have
a large Pillar I, ask for a contribution from the Member States
to support it? It is cutting the same size cake in a different
type of pattern.
Lord Cameron of Dillington: I think I
had better leave it there.
Q81 Lord Moynihan:
Could I ask you and your colleagues to travel somewhat further
afield than Spain and Portugal and the natural habitats of Eastern
Germany into the rather complex area of world trade? It was noticeable
in your very helpful evidence that you did not comment on the
implications of changes taking place in the world market as a
result of trade liberalisation, the potential impact of rising
real incomes and a high demand for renewable energy crops, et
cetera. What sort of impact do you feel this might have on the
environment in Europe, and indeed globally?
Mr Huyton: Globally, the biggest drive of biodiversity
decline is agriculture expansion—agriculture expansion in
places like Brazil and Indonesia, which is feeding the global
commodities market, and we know that an increasingly liberalised
agricultural market will accelerate that pattern. The European
Commission did a sustainability impact assessment of the Doha
round for trade negotiations and one of their key environmental
findings was that we would accelerate rainforest destruction.
So that is a fact. Of course, at the same time the areas which
are less competitive at the global level would experience more
of a depression, which could be particularly worrying if it is
those areas which are practising the traditional form of agriculture
which is delivering environmental benefits. That is one of the
reasons behind our thinking that these areas need specific targeting
in Europe, because I suspect that will be the biggest risk from
the biodiversity perspective of increased liberalisation in the
EU. There is this bigger question about commodity prices going
up as a result of changes in diets and increasingly a growing
population. There is not a lot we can do about that. But on the
other side an increased demand for biofuels is driving commodity
prices up, and there is more we can do about that. The biofuels
market is a publicly created market. It is created through public
intervention and subsidy in the form of tax incentives, obligations,
and such like. So we have more of a say there and I think that,
if we start seeing serious problems in terms of habitat destruction
at the global level, then we will need to rein in the biofuels
market. We have been urging the Government here and the European
Commission to ensure proper monitoring of land-use change globally,
agriculture expansion and intensification is in place so that
we can see the response to these two patterns and so that we can
inform our domestic policies on biofuels as a result of that.
Dr Avery: It is difficult to see that the outlook
is particularly rosy, is it not? We live on a small and beautiful
planet. There are already more than six billion people living
here. If everybody had the same standard of living that we have
in this country, we would need three planets. The population is
growing and going to grow. What has happened because of that in
history is that we have eaten into rainforests, savannahs and
natural habitats to a growing extent; and it is quite difficult
to see that that is going to stop, which depresses me enormously.
But I am afraid the RSPB does not have the answer to that up our
sleeves, and I am not sure who does. It would be wrong for us
to come here and say, "Oh, it's all very simple and it's
all going to work out OK," because my suspicion would be
that it is not.
Q82 Lord Moynihan:
Is the global land-use change going to be covered in the document
you referred to earlier, namely the launch in Brussels with your
colleagues on the 27th?
Mr Huyton: It is one of the key challenges to
agriculture policy in Europe's rural areas which we outline in
that document.
Dr Avery: You did mention biofuels, and maybe
we should say just a little more on biofuels now. Biofuels vary
enormously in their greenhouse gas emissions savings. They have
been treated as all being the same, and they are not. Clearly,
one of the worrying things is that growing biofuels creates an
incentive to cut down more of tropical rainforest than we are
doing already: and rainforest destruction counts for about 20%
of greenhouse gas emissions at the moment. So it would be bizarre
if we cut down rainforest and create greenhouse gas emissions
from doing that to create biofuels, some of which have a rather
poor record themselves in saving greenhouse gas emissions, but
that seems to be one direction we might be heading in. I think
some of the enthusiasm for biofuels is a con. It is an environmental
con and clearly it will create great pressure on food production
globally as well. You cannot grow food and biofuels on the same
bit of land very easily, and that does come down to how many people
there are on this planet and how much we are trying to get out
of it. So I am depressed, I am afraid. I am usually an optimist,
but this seems too big a problem for us to crack very easily.
Q83 Lord Moynihan:
I appreciate your frankness on the subject. There is a very specific
point, which goes back to your comments earlier on the high natural
value of farming and the decoupling of support that would lead
to a loss of high natural value farming. You suggest that the
Less-Favoured-Area payments should be designed to protect this
sector. I wonder if you have made an analysis on whether or not
this can be made consistent with the `green box' requirements
of the WTO or not?
Dr Armstrong-Brown: There is an issue there,
because of the way in which the `green box' is constructed. We
do believe in the short-term that is not the biggest problem for
these areas. The problem is to find some way of retaining them
until any possible legal wrangle can be untangled. It is possible
there might be an issue, but we do not think it is a particularly
serious one and there is certainly much more urgency to get some
payments in place which would actually retain these first. In
the longer run, the ideology behind the setting for the `green
box' and the world trade rules which relate to agriculture, it
is worth asking questions about whether it is going to guarantee
the delivery of the things which are emerging as priorities now,
the social and environmental things which are emerging as priorities
now. One certainly would not want to throw the baby out with the
bathwater, but if it becomes impossible to support areas of land
management which are delivering huge environmental good but are
not economic, surely that is wrong? We would then start to challenge
the rules around the green box and suggest that income for GOM
payments were not necessarily the best way to sustain these systems.
Lord Moynihan: Thank you very much indeed.
Q84 Chairman:
If we are talking about a concern with global warming, maintaining
livestock on the uplands is not a very good idea, is it? The fewer
cows, the better?
Dr Armstrong-Brown: The greenhouse gas emissions
from the livestock? I think the few which are in the uplands do
not really emit quite as many as the vast numbers in intensive
feed herds in the lowlands.
Lord Plumb: Are you including sheep in
that, Chairman?
Chairman: Yes, I include sheep.
Lord Moynihan: It depends on the quality
of the food production!
Q85 Viscount Brookeborough:
In your paper, in the Rural Development paragraph, you say that
funding inappropriate afforestation is not a good thing. Could
you go a bit further into that, because quite clearly the clearing
of the rainforest is a very, very bad thing. What in the UK is
`inappropriate afforestation' if you accept that we desperately
need timber from somewhere, no matter how much paper you recycle,
and so on?
Dr Avery: I think in the past, in the same way
that we have encouraged unsustainable farming practices, we have
encouraged unsustainable forestry. So afforestation in the uplands,
for example—which is a terribly bad place to grow trees,
actually—they do not grow very good trees—where you
need to drain soils in order to be able to grow the trees has
led to increased run-off.
Q86 Viscount Brookeborough:
But there is a tremendous amount of work going on to, if you like,
in layperson's language, create sponges and the run-off from forests
which are currently being planted, or re-planted, is very, very
much less.
Dr Avery: This is just like agriculture, it
depends on the forestry, does it not? So, rows and rows of sitka
spruce trees on the side of a hill which has had moor grips put
into it to allow them to grow there probably is not very sustainable
forestry and increasing tree growth across the uplands with native
species might actually lead to carbon sequestration flood risk
management and a richer environment and a better landscape.
Q87 Viscount Brookeborough:
I am inclined to agree with you about trees on the uplands, and
so on. But unfortunately we have got to have them somewhere. Are
you then suggesting that we should grow it on lowlands, or where,
because you have already said that biofuels being grown on lowlands
will take away food production and we could run into problems
on that? Somewhere these trees are going to have to grow.
Dr Avery: I think we will have to take that
away and think about it some more and come back to you.
Q88 Chairman:
What you have said, then, about forestry is fair for, say, 20
years ago, but forestry policy has changed significantly over
the last 10 or 15 years?
Dr Avery: It has, I think that is fair. But
we are left with the mistakes of previous forestry policy and
the Forestry Commission and landowners are now left at the felling
of the first crop of trees with the decision of whether they continue
with forestry or go back into some other land use in many of those
places.
Q89 Viscount Brookeborough:
But we still have the lowest percentage of our land of any European
state under forestry, and therefore it is a Government aim to
increase that, because otherwise we are relying on other forests
which are unsustainable, such as rainforests?
Dr Avery: Yes, I think that is true. I am not
sure that, if we were starting from scratch, we would have a State
forestry service now. We do not have a State agricultural department
or a State fishing fleet. The Forestry Commission was brought
into being after the First World War because we were worried that
we needed a strategic supply of pit props. We do not need those
any more. Many of the places where we are trying to grow trees
at the moment are not the best places to grow them; and, if we
are looking at the pure economics of forestry, we probably would
not do it in many of the places where we are doing it.
Q90 Chairman:
British forestry is not economic forestry any more, is it? It
is recreational and environmental forestry—in England. There
is virtually zero commercial forestry in England being planted
now.
Dr Avery: I think there is almost zero economically
profitable forestry, but the State still owns large amounts of
land and manages large amounts of land, and the Forestry Commission's
aim is to grow trees on that land. We would actually say that
there might be better uses for quite a lot of that land than growing
trees.
Q91 Lord Palmer:
We are nearly at the end and I was intrigued to hear what you
were saying about biofuels. I must remember to send you the latest
press release from the NFU about how, if the land taken out of
set-aside was to grow enough oilseed rape to meet our RTFO, a
lot of your fears in fact, I think, would be put aside. But a
yes or no answer, please: are you concerned that support for the
production of biofuels would actually have a damaging impact on
bird life? You used to say it did, but you have slightly changed
your stance over the years, particularly when Lord Bach was Minister!
I put that on the record.
Dr Avery: If it is a yes or no answer, then
the answer is yes, we are still concerned.
Lord Palmer: What do you consider to
be the main challenges for agriculture as a result of climate
change? And what role might a new Rural Development policy based
on the current EAFRD play in assisting farmers to adapt to these
challenges?
Q92 Chairman:
That could be a "Don't know" if you like!
Dr Avery: We could have a go at that, but it
would be fair to say that nobody, I think, who could appear before
you would know the answers with any great certainty here. Clearly,
some of the challenges that climate change will set for agriculture
will be in moving to new crops and new ways of farming. So maybe
one can just look a bit further south in Europe to see what British
agriculture might look like, but it may not be quite that simple.
Another challenge will be that agriculture, like all other industries,
will have to be looking at its carbon emissions and looking at
ways to do its job with lower emissions. I think, as we touched
on earlier, there are some quite big opportunities for land management
in terms of looking at whether places like the uplands have a
different future, which is in being carbon sinks, and managing
upland peat and soils in different ways to stop them being degraded,
to stop them drying out, to stop them emitting greenhouse gases,
maybe a softer management approach to restore those uplands so
that they are not adding much carbon—they may be adding
carbon to what is there at the moment, but they stop losing carbon.
There is quite a lot of work which is now beginning to be done
to look at those issues and it may be that upland farmers will
be paid for farming carbon rather than farming sheep in 20 years'
time. That might be one of the things that land management delivers
as a public good. Flood risk management may be another thing which
is produced in that way.
Lord Palmer: Thank you very much.
Q93 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
I cannot let you get away with just a "Yes" answer to
the previous question. Could you expand on why growing crops for
biofuels is damaging for bird life?
Dr Avery: We would love to. We were not asked
to give a wider answer.
Q94 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
No, I realise that. I thought you were getting away too easily!
Mr Huyton: One thing I would say is that, while
the NFU is saying that they can produce enough to meet the Renewable
Transport Fuel Obligation, there is a reason why all our processing
plants are being sited next to major ports and that is because
a lot of it will come from outside the UK and outside the EU,
because biofuels is a global commodity market which the UK cannot
necessarily compete on. So that is just something to be aware
of. It is not where the market will deliver the biofuels from,
unless the market is regulated in some way. We are concerned in
that short-term biofuels do need land, so they will need to be
grown on set-aside. Set-aside has inadvertently had a range of
benefits for farmers in particular throughout Europe, so that
is a worry. Also, it is the first sign of this land use pressure.
Biofuels need land and I think the NFU's own calculations suggest
that you would need 1.2 million hectares of land producing oilseed
rape and wheat to meet this obligation, and that is a lot of land
when you consider how much arable we have in the UK. So this idea
of losing habitats that are important—in the UK that might
be set-aside and in Eastern Europe that might be permanent grassland,
which would be a very big worry from the biodiversity perspective.
It is one of our most important farmed habitats in Europe. Then
perhaps in the longer term there is an idea that biofuels, and
bioenergy as well, will mean new crops, which will represent quite
a big ecological shift in terms of the nature of our farmland.
So Miscanthus and short rotation coppice bring with them a range
of challenges for wildlife that we need to make sure that we manage.
We know very little about what kind of habitat Miscanthus will
offer for wildlife. We suspect it will be pretty poor because
it is extremely fast-growing dense grass which has got very little
space for any kind of wildlife to access, but the research needs
to be done so that we know what the impacts of these new crops
will be and how we should manage them. There is also a concern
particularly of these new perennial crops being planted very close
to processing stations and creating monocultures in permanent
crops.
Dr Avery: We are not against biofuels and we
would say that there may well be a place, and probably there is
a place, for the right type of biofuels in this country and abroad.
But it would be wrong to say that all biofuels are good and they
are all going to be great for the environment, they are all going
to save lots of greenhouse gas emissions and therefore they are
the green crop which will have no downsides at all. Not all people
are the same, not all environmental organisations are the same,
and not all biofuels are the same. We would be nervous that, with
the bandwagon that is biofuels at the moment, too many people
jump onto it without thinking about it, particularly since, if
biofuels are going to have a bigger place in UK farming, it will
only be if public money goes into supporting them. And, if public
money goes into supporting them, we ought to be very clear about
their greenhouse gas emission benefits (and not all biofuels are
the same) and we ought to look at their other environmental benefits
and disbenefits (and not all biofuels will be the same on that
basis either). So let us look carefully and properly, and saying,
"Let's use all of next year's set-aside to grow biofuels"
does not feel like the most informed and careful look at the subject
to us.
Q95 Viscount Ullswater:
Is that the same attitude you take towards the growing of GM crops?
Dr Avery: I am happy to touch on that. The RSPB
opposed the herbicide-tolerant GM crops, the three crops which
were proposed and went through the farm-scale evaluations, and
I think actually the results of the farm-scale evaluations showed
that our worries about those particular crops were indeed justified,
which is why they did not receive Government approval to go ahead.
But GM crops generally we are neutral on. In fact, we have quite
close contacts with the biotechnology firms and I always suggest
to them that the challenge for them is to come forward with a
GM crop which we could support because it has big environmental
benefits, and that is possible. But none of the companies has
yet come close to coming to us to say, "Here's one that you're
going to like."
Q96 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
There is a gap in the market!
Dr Avery: Absolutely, it is a gap in the market.
It takes quite a long time to develop the crop.
Q97 Lord Plumb:
One of your major concerns was the use of fertilizers and pesticides,
and so on and so forth. Do you not accept that, if we move towards
genetic modification, that in turn will reduce the quantity of
fertilizers quite considerably and in many areas almost eliminate
the use of pesticides in the way that they do? But on that particular
point, reading your evidence, you are concentrating on those areas.
Do you not accept that season by season, as we see the changes,
particularly taking the present season, the big problem at the
moment is blight, blight in potatoes? We shall have no potato
crop in this country or in other parts of Europe, Holland in particular,
where there is not spraying dealing with blight. Farmers are having
to spray every third day to try to control the blight. To say,
therefore, that we should either eliminate or considerably reduce
this is totally ignoring the fact that you have got to live with
nature and not try to do things which are slightly different?
Dr Avery: There are several statements and questions
all together in what you said.
Q98 Lord Plumb:
Well, answer me yes or no!
Dr Avery: I certainly cannot answer yes or no
to that. In terms of inputs to GM crops, we would still say that
you need to look at these on a GM-crop-by-GM-crop basis. The rhetoric
from the biotech companies about herbicide-tolerant crops was
that they would need less pesticide, which was indeed true, but
less pesticide that would have a more harmful impact on the environment
because those crops would have been modified to allow broad spectrum
herbicides to be used which would kill all the weeds. That was
what they were supposed to do. So this is like saying that drinking
a shot of neat alcohol will do you less harm than drinking a couple
of pints of shandy. It is not true. It is a smaller amount of
alcohol or pesticide, but the impact it has is a lot bigger. So
our position on GM crops is that we are philosophically neutral,
but we await with interest the industry coming along with the
GM crop which the environmental movement can get behind, and probably
the RSPB would be one of the first environmental organisations
to back a GM crop that really was good. But I have not seen one
yet. I have not even had a sniff of one yet.
Q99 Lord Plumb:
Go to India and look at the cotton crop and then you decide.
Dr Avery: That may be true, but not for the
UK.
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