We are urgently developing research requirements with other European laboratories to make sure we understand and the disease (Schmallenberg) better.Maize
Global debate over maize centres on GM and biofuels
SINCE maize was first grown in the UK around 100 years ago, plantings each year have increased to around 160,000 hectares (400,000 acres).
Nearly half of that is grown in the south, where there is sufficient warmth to ripen the crop, and 98 per cent of the total is used as wholecrop forage for cattle. The remaining 2 per cent of maize - around 4,000ha (9,900 acres) - is grown as grain maize, dried or crimped and put on the market as a concentrate feedstock.
However, most maize concentrate used by pig, poultry and cattle farmers is imported. The bulk of the world’s maize production is in the US, China and Brazil.
In Europe, France, Germany, Spain and Italy are the big maize producers. UK farmers import most of their maize - more than 70 per cent - from France.
John Morgan of the Maize Growers Association says there is ‘a small but growing’ number of UK farmers growing grain maize for concentrate.
“But the growing conditions favour the warmer climate and quality tends to be better from places like France,” he says.
Maize is the centre of two current major global issues, where fierce debate rages around whether the crop should be diverted into biofuels and whether the crop should be genetically modified.
The crop is increasingly used as a feedstock for the production of ethanol for fuel in the US and is widely used in Germany for biogas plants.
However, critics blame the food price rise in 2007 on the diversion of vital food resources into fuel.
GM maize is also one of the few GM crops grown commercially. More than 80 per cent of the US maize crop is GM. Spanish farmers grow the most GM maize in the EU, though at 80,000ha (198,000 acres) it is a relatively small area.
Mr Morgan says GM ‘doesn’t offer anything to British farmers’ at the moment because the traits are for pests and disease we do not have here.
However, the growth of new GM varieties in the US and Brazil which have not been approved by European authorities means UK feed importers now source nearly all of their maize imports from within the EU.
Maize facts and figures
- UK farmers planted 160,000 hectares (395,400 acres) in 2009, up from 132,000ha (326,000 acres) in 2005
- In 2007 over 150 million ha (370m acres) of maize were planted worldwide
- France planted 13m ha (32m acres) in 2007
- 44 per cent of English maize is grown in the South West (16 per cent in the South East and 15 per cent in the West Midlands)
- There are over 180 varieties of maize available to UK farmers
- Farmers planted around 4,700ha (116,150 acres) for the dry grain maize market in 2009
- Maize is currently valued at around £110 per tonne on farm
- The UK imported 400,000 tonnes of maize in 2009