PROFESSOR IAN Crute, director of Rothamsted Research Institute in Hertfordshire delivered a stark warning to policy makers and politicians when he spoke at the annual meeting of the Scottish Society for Crop Research in Invergowrie yesterday, writes Ewan Pate, farming editor.

“Sustainable and efficient primary land-based businesses must be considered fundamental to the long term social and economic success of north west Europe. That hasn’t been the case so far,” he said.

Criticising the lack of investment in research to meet the needs of the future, he continued, “Even with climate change there will be no major changes in the main crops grown in the UK, but work on plant breeding and biotechnology will be vital. We will need to develop and deploy novel products.

“Weeds are a major constraint and herbicides are being withdrawn at a time when there is virtually no research going on in the UK to find alternatives.

“The development of club root in oilseed rape is another example of lack of foresight. The increasing importance of oilseed rape as a crop was obvious and the losses from club root were entirely predictable but there was no funding for pre-emptive research into the disease.”

As an illustration of the benefits of science Professor Crute had only to quote the results of the longest running crop experiment in the world.

The Broadbalk field at Rothamsted has grown continuous wheat since 1850 with the results faithfully recorded by generations of researchers. The section of the field which has been untreated with fertilisers or sprays has maintained a steady yield of around 1.5 tonnes per hectare over 158 years despite modern varieties being introduced from time to time.

Adding lime and farmyard manure along with some phosphate and potash raised yields to a fairly consistent five tonnes per hectare. But the sections of the field given a full commercial treatment of inorganic fertilisers and the latest agrochemicals has seen yields soar since the 1950s until they now average between nine and 10 tonnes per hectare.

Professor Crute said, “We clearly have a system at Broadbalk that can sustain yields but it is completely dependent on fossil fuels for producing fertiliser and chemicals as well as for cultivations. The challenge will be finding out how to substitute some of these inputs.

“We are using up photosynthesis which occurred around 100 million years ago and was stored as coal and oil. Now we need to move on to using real time photosynthesis.”

However the outlook need not be too depressing. Professor Crute pointed to the Amazon basin, the Congo basin, north America and north-western Europe as being main production areas in future. Only 4.6% of land area in the world is used for cereal production at present, 6.9% for other crops and 24% for pasture leaving 30% as savannah and 34.5% desert, mountains and icefields.

“Currently for all activities the world utilises 13 tera watts of power per annum. By 2050 the requirement will be 25 tera watts but over 90,000 tera watts reaches the Earth from the sun so there is plenty of scope,” he said.

“Energy crops will have their place, especially woody crops which provide ligno cellulose for conversion. But yields will need to double from the current 11-18 oven dried tonnes per hectare before they make efficient use of land.”

The supply of land is not finite. Around 1500 million hectares can be cultivated globally but 10 million hectares of the best land is being lost each year through development or erosion. This is a loss that can be ill-afforded in Professor Crute’s view.