A valuable part of conferences is the chance to question and debate with the expert speakers. Below we have picked out a few highlights of the debates held during the conference’s plenary sessions:
Plenary session: Issues and Challenges
“If we want to maintain food security and high food productivity, we have to invest in agriculture and agricultural research. World development reports from last year indicate very clearly that although increase of the food production was there, it was lower than population growth. We can also notice that the rate of enhancement is flattering and diet is changing. Does this mean we need high-input agriculture? No, it means we need to invest in high-productive agriculture in the best land. We can reach high yield levels without too much input, taking advantage of biological characteristics of the land. This requires knowledge, insights regarding farmers’ fields, but also policy.”
Rudy Rabbinge, chair of the CGIAR Science Council and University Professor, Wageningen UR, The Netherlands, responds to a question on whether we can relax on the issue of increasing yields and focus on other priorities.
“If we want the best energy use but also reduction of gas emissions along with an efficient pesticide use, we need a sophisticated manner for ecological intensification [which] requires pesticide use via IPM [Integrated Pest Management] or organic agriculture, which doesn’t pose a problem as long as the people are ready to pay more…Organic agriculture is attractive for many because they are more related to their production systems, which is very needed because it is decoupled in many situations.”
Rudy Rabbinge responds to a question on organic agriculture.
“Companies do use trials in different locations. There is a cost of marketing for a variety so companies benefit from selling the variety as much as possible. But if you try to market a variety in a too large area, you loose adaptation. For example there are largely two agricultural zones in the UK for arable crops, east and west, needing a different set of traits; there are also roughly four zones in France for breeding. Breeders do trials all over the target area. If you compare Britain to Hungary, we know that Hungarian wheat varieties look very different from British varieties. The reason for that is the hot and humid time in the summer in Hungary where you get far more Fusarium
and you get the higher yield with a large gap between the leaves on the plant and a particularly large gap between the top leaf and the ear. In Britain you get high yield by bringing the canopy as high as possible, and the ear not far from the top leaves. So there’s a value in using the different environments but if you go too far you loose profitability.”
James Brown, Project Leader, John Innes Centre, UK, weighs the pros and cons of breeders using different trial sites.
“Traditionally, plant breeding was dictated by plant breeders, so it was technology pushed. In my opinion, it’s more needed to set breeding programmes in an integrated manner, looking at the cropping system and the farming system characteristics. The optimisation is on another level than that of the individual crop plant, that’s why it’s important to revisit the breeding strategies in line with the crop protection aspects.”
Rudy Rabbinge on the challenges for plant breeding.
“I agree with what Rudy Rabbinge said, but I’d like to add a different perspective. If you put plant breeding in the context of sub-Saharan Africa, solving first political and economical issues along with structuring social systems and transportation is the only way to have an impact on food production and food security. Breeding can only make an improvement when there are favourable political and economical conditions.”
James Brown on the same topic.
“I first noticed the lack of quantitative data when I worked as an adviser. I was amazed to see how farmers, together with advisors, were taking decisions on the basis of what they could see and I knew from my scientific background that the situation can be different from what you see. Therefore I developed a computer-based system of my own in 1999 when there was no software for the farmers to collect the monitoring data, but I didn’t provide it to farmers, I rather used it as an example for them. Now there are several good programmes for collecting data and make it usable.”
Cliff Ohmart, IPM Director, Lodi-Woodbridge Winegrape Commission, California, USA, on the importance of pest monitoring data.
“There are valuable tools, for example in situations when a farmer wants to do a treatment to help him with deciding the right moment. We have had severe erosion too on extension programmes. There are state extension programmes relying on one agent per region and per industry, and every piece is important yet the situation is problematic because personal contact is the most important to transmit IPM and farmer-to-farmer education plays a central role.”
Cliff Ohmart on the benefits of decision support systems and erosion in the advisory infrastructure.
Plenary session: Stakeholder Perspectives
“IPM [Integrated Pest Management] should be the standard in agriculture, but there are no labels at a European level. The cost of production should be included in the product but the European Commission’s position is that the states should set national labels.”
Michel Guillon, Former President and Honorary Member, International Biocontrol Manufacturers Association, on the problems of marketing IPM products.
“There are programmes in Europe that support IPM but there are no common standards. Of course systems should be evaluated on local varieties and local situations. Relating to the world situation, IPM doesn’t imply decrease of production. There are some situations where after the implementation of IPM production increased.”
Daniel Lesinsky, Pesticide Action Network - Europe, Centre for Sustainable Alternatives, Slovakia, on the slow progress of IPM.
“I can only speak on behalf of Carrefour. Setting up an IP [Integrated Production] standard would surely be good for the retailers. In France, people know the AB label [organic agriculture] and Max Havelaar [Fairtrade]. We still need to communicate with the consumers on our Quality Engagement to make the difference with other retailers.”
Agnès Pondaven, Carrefour Quality Line Manager, France, on the role of retailers in communicating IPM to consumers.
“I didn’t mean that there are no standards for IPM but that there is no common one. We need one European standard because there are many ‘integrated’ standards - concerning pesticide management, protection, production etc - to make a trustworthy EU-wide certification. Regarding the retailers, I was analysing implications in middle and eastern Europe and we found that the same food chain in western Europe applying a certain strategy regarding residues does nothing in eastern Europe. We cannot expect private bodies to be a leverage.”
Daniel Lesinsky on the same topic.
“In the UK, parliament was shown last week a study on global trends highlighting that hunger is a question of purchase power, not of distribution. Concerning the question of the food-feed issue, we have the luxury to decide to eat less meat, but we can’t tell other parts of the world not to change their eating habits and not to eat as we do.”
Claudia Michel, Senior Manager for Agriculture, Environment and Food Policy, European Crop Protection Association, on last year’s food crisis.
Closing session
“In my own area in West Africa, farmers have to compete with people who have had 50 years of public support and scale-enlargement, and then you can’t accept any longer the fact that Dutch chicken wings [are] imported into Ghana destroying local chicken production. I’m not in favour of a liberalisation scenario. Creating the market that gives a chance to IPM doesn’t occur in a liberal scenario.”
Niels Röling, Emeritus Professor, Wageningen University, The Netherlands, on the relationship between IPM and international market prices.
“One other major driver would be the slow cultural change in which we begin to see how climate change and biodiversity, for example, are affecting our habitat and our survival. People are starting to be convinced that ecological issues also determine our survival. The complex interface between economics and ecology coming [into the] public domain is an important driver.”
Niels Röling on other drivers for IPM implementation.
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