By unlocking the export potential China offers the pig industry, not to mention the red meat sector as a whole, we could gain entry into a marketplace which comprises a fifth of the world’s population.Food security central to £2 billion bioscience plan
THE Government will pump more than £2 billion of taxpayers’ money into biological research as part of a new strategy to meet global challenges such as food security and fossil fuel depletion.
The Goverbnment-funded Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), has drawn up a strategic plan to spend its annual £450 million budget over the next five years.
Food security will be one of three key priorities for the money, alongside health and renewable energy.
Professor Douglas Kell, BBSRC chief executive, said food security must be tackled through scientific advancements such as higher yielding, more nutritious wheat that can cope with a changing climate and use fewer inputs.
“How can we feed 9 billion people sustainably by the middle of this century?
“BBSRC-funded bioscience will help to provide a sustainable supply of affordable, nutritious and safe food for a growing global population,” he said.
A significant amount of the BBSRC budget will be diverted into the development of plant genetics – which will include research into genetic modification.
Money will also be injected into understanding immunology and the pathogens that threaten humans and livestock.
Prof Kell said he wanted the 21st Century should be the ‘Age of Bioscience’.
“The BBSRC research community is world-beating. Collectively we have the unified scientific approaches, the skills and infrastructure to meet the challenges of the 21st century – this is the age of bioscience,” he said.
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Readers' comments (3)
Diana Korchien | 2 February 2010 4:00 pm
Bioscience as the touted solution to feeding the world in the 21st century reminds me of transport planners building extra lanes onto a crowded motorway. More lanes = more traffic -= more congestion. More food = more people = less biodiversity = meaningless existence... Stop GM.
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Ashley Kay | 4 February 2010 5:33 pm
GM crops' main purpose is to place more money and control over the global food supply chain in the hands of a few multi-nationals.
Virtually all GM crops are designed to withstand specific herbicides and insecticides. Now it seems the oft-predicted problems of 'superweeds' are finally upon us. Farmers growing GM crops in Arkansas, and Nth Carolina, US have been forced to pay labourers to hand-pick giant pigweed that can withstand as much glyphosate herbicide as you can afford to douse them with.
We need to focus research on creating sustainable and resiliant practices; learning from, building on, and not throwing away, centuries of accumulated knowledge; not looking for the quick and profitable fix that may work in the [very] short term but will ultimately only result in a larger disaster (albeit not for those on the payroll of the multinationals whose fortunes will have been made).
How much more time, energy, and resources will we waste before we learn that we can't 'beat' nature.
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GMCropsFacingMeltdown.php
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Candy Spillad | 9 March 2010 3:11 pm
I hope BBSRC is devoting enough of that money to research into other ways of improving yield, such as preventing or reversing the exhaustion of soil. Some of these are quite straightforward, but would benefit hugely from proper evaluation and optimisation.
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