SUMMARY

  The Applied Research Forum is very concerned about the reduction in institutes, and funding within those remaining, for work on sustainable agriculture and related science. This will have a significant impact on the farming and food industries, as well as the UK's ability to manage its countyside sustainably.

  1.  The Applied Research Forum for Farming and Food was established in 2003 following a recommendation in the Report of the Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food (the "Curry Report").

  The Forum provides a mechanism for industry levy bodies to collaborate in the development and integration of appropriate strategic and applied R&D programmes and associated knowledge transfer activities, and to influence Government prioritisation and investment in agri-food research.

  2.  Our comments relate specifically to the BBSRC Institutes with sustainable agriculture in their remit, and to the role they play in maintaining the UK research and skills base.

  3.  The levy bodies are very concerned about the reduced funding and the seemingly continuous reduction in skilled staff at institutes such as Rothamsted Research and the Institute for Grassland and Environmental Research. Over the past few years a number of institutes engaged in strategic and applied research have closed with some of the staff moving elsewhere. The most recent examples are Long Ashton Research Station and Silsoe Research Institute. Both IGER and Rothamsted are now under funding pressure, with a possibility of some kind of merger. Almost inevitably, this will lead to further job losses.

  4.  The UK has been at the forefront of research into sustainable agriculture, an area of research essential, not only for our farming industry, but for the UK landscape and environment and the very important food manufacturing sector. Levy body applied research depends on the strategic research developed by the RCIs. In recent years we have seen staffing in several areas reduced dramatically; for example weed research at Rothamsted. The UK is losing many of its best researchers.

  5.  Part of the problem is that Defra have traditionally provided considerable funding for these RCIs and this is being withdrawn at an alarming rate. We have doubts that Defra and BBSRC are working together to ensure there is a national approach to research in this area; rather the institutes are having to respond in a piecemeal way. This will have grave consequences for the national research effort and for the individual institutes.

June 2006