By Ewan Pate, farming editor

LATER THIS week Professor John Hillman stands down from his 19-year stint as director of the Scottish Crop Research Institute at Invergowrie.

While many others, especially those who have been at the helm for so many years, might take the opportunity to sit back and indulge in a spot of reminiscence, that is not John Hillman’s style.

Speaking yesterday he much preferred to look forward to the future for science and farming, especially in a Scottish context.

Brought up on a mixed farm in Kent, he reckons this has given him a high regard for the need to make profit.

Perhaps this may be the reason he is quietly proud of the period of unbroken financial growth at SCRI.

The institute has become a world leader, not only in its traditional activities of plant breeding and research, but in whole new fields of activity.

Rather ruefully he reflects that the attitude to agriculture in the UK has prevented the wholesale uptake of what he regards as very exciting technology.

Professor Hillman would much prefer a culture of “wealth creating horizon scanning,” where the food production industry in the UK looked for every opportunity to make use of the “seed corn” of new research.

He is full of praise for the tradition of innovation in Scottish agriculture and thinks back to an age when Scottish farmers were leading the world in innovation and the uptake of new ideas.

The Scottish research institutes, the universities and the way in which the agricultural colleges uniquely linked all this together all had a part to play.

He is alarmed to see a population decline in Scotland matched by what is commonly perceived as a decline in the economy and a failure to capitalise on the intellectual base present at SCRI and other institutes.

In Professor Hillman’s view there is a fundamental change afoot in the way the devolved government views agricultural research and development.

As a whole, he views SEERAD as being policy-led rather than as a sponsor of science for the public good, which is a very different situation from the one he faced when he arrived in 1986.

Closer collaboration with the universities is very much seen as the way to maximise the benefits to the country in the more commercial environment in which he now operates.

In recent years he has seen over £50 million competitively attracted to fund projects at the institute.

Not only does SCRI have a number of university staff working on site, it works closely with Dundee and Abertay universities on a number of projects.

Many of these are in areas of biotechnology removed from conventional agriculture, but which Professor Hillman sees as being vital to the future.

By as soon as 2010 he sees the market for “white biotechnology” being twice that of the pharmaceutical industry.

He speaks with huge enthusiasm about biofuels, biodegradable packaging, medicinal plants and vaccines.

Equally though, he has great optimism for plants as a means of creating a cleaner environment.

Their role in absorbing carbon dioxide is well understood but he sees further than that where plants can be used to clear up nuclear contamination or as “slope engineers” where they can be specifically used to prevent soil erosion.

All this, of course, leads on to the area of GM and all the controversy which that attracts.

Professor Hillman has never been far from the vanguard in the move to promote GM.

He believes that the battle to win acceptance for the new technologies has been won worldwide but not here.

As he puts it, “The UK has been converted from being at the forefront to being a bystander in international research and science.”

He feels that the development of GM crops is very much for young people to develop and implement, if for no other reason than that it is so fast moving.

Professor Hillman hates the idea that “we are exporting brilliant young people as they move abroad to be part of this huge advance.”

Perhaps strangely for someone who has been so much vilified by elements of the anti-GM movement he is rather conciliatory.

“I have never regarded as enemies people who defend their own belief system” and he has always been happy to debate with bodies such as the Soil Association where he can have a rational debate on scientific grounds.

“I am,” he said, “always pleased when agricultural and horticultural growers can make a living, whatever method they use.”

Asked if he could see a time when science in general and agricultural science in particular might become more important in the public perception, he quoted the recent diseases of BSE and foot-and-mouth as examples of times when scientific answers were urgently sought.

There have been decades without serious disruption from major plant and crop diseases, but as he pointed out, “We are in a world where we are only three meals away from chaos.”

As to a return to prosperity for farming in general he feels this is most likely to follow a general slump in the economy which would make the balance of payments more important and turn the spotlight on imports.

He advises Scottish farmers to look for niches where they can grow novel and interesting crops that will attract premiums.

It is hard to imagine Professor Hillman standing back from these developments.

He is so involved in the process that he has never felt the need to take annual leave over his 19 years at SCRI.

Anyone who has read his annual reports, which take an all-encompassing view of everything to do with food production, will have no doubt of his dedication to the subject.

His final report will be issued shortly and is sure to be as controversial and incisive as the 18 which came before it. Maybe more so.