The compulsory levy which governs the Horticultural Development Company (HDC) may be holding back vital innovation in fresh produce.
Some £90 million of funding could be rendered “unattractive” by a loophole allowing access to information on company research developments.
In an exclusive interview with freshinfo, farming minister Jim Paice said the new Sustainable Agriculture and Food Innovation Platform plans to invest up to £90m of government funding in industry-led projects over the next five years.
He said: “Through the new [platform], we are working with industry to stimulate the development of new technologies that will increase food productivity while decreasing the environmental impact of the food and farming industries.”
But Bill Parker, director of horticulture at the HDC, said businesses were rejecting the funding due to issues over exclusivity.
Due to the statutory Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board levy, the findings, overseen by the Technology Strategy Board, have to be available to levy payers meaning that any company doing research would not own the intellectual property rights (IP) of the findings.
Parker said: “Because the levy is statutory and is a para-fiscal tax then the research has to be open and is therefore not attractive. Last year, a number of crop protection companies pulled out of possible research as the proposition became less attractive.”
Parker believes there may be some imminent options for horticultural research. Talks are ongoing and a meeting has been set up to bring together the HDC and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
This would join the former’s applied and the latter’s pure research together and tap into BBSRC funding.
Parker said: “DEFRA has stepped back from production research and has put an emphasis on pure. But the BBSRC are now required to show an impact on industry which it has not in the past, which is a good sign.”
For the full Jim Paice interview see this week's FPJ.
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