CPA Crop Protection Association

The Crop Protection Association (CPA) has followed the Fresh Produce Consortium in welcoming the launch of the 'Global Food and Farming Futures' Foresight report, which it said has highlighted the urgency of the global food security challenge.

In a statement, CPA emphasised the need – and its own plans – to convey the report's key messages to EU policy-makers, as evidence of how advances in science and technology must be applied to help global agriculture produce enough food to meet a growing world population.

Central to report is a recognition that the current food system is failing, and that more food needs to be produced from existing land and resources through the 'sustainable intensification' of agriculture, the group noted.

This will be achieved through targeted investment in research to increase yield and climate resilience of foods, with CPA adding that no technological process should be ruled out, with access to innovation determined according to scientific and evidence-based criteria.

'This is an authoritative and far-reaching report, with national and global relevance and conveying a clear and urgent message of the need to increase production, reduce waste, cut emissions and free up trade to address the pressures facing the global food system,' said Dominic Dyer, chief executive of CPA.

'The report is right to emphasise that access to scientific and technological innovation will be essential to help food production keep pace with population growth,' he added. 'But as I stressed to (Defra secretary) Caroline Spelman at the launch, the message must be conveyed to politicians as a matter of urgency. There is no point having one group of policy-makers advocating the use of new agricultural technology when another group appears hell-bent on blocking progress in areas such as GM crops and crop protection.'

Mr Dyer said that CPA was developing plans, in partnership with the British Chamber of Commerce, to present the Foresight report to EU Ministers, officials and MEPs in Brussels over the coming months.

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