There is still, in Britain, a touchingly bucolic view of farming. Jolly milkmaids, hens scratching in farmyards and sunny fields full of happy workers are the images that crop up again and again in advertisements for milk, eggs and other agricultural products. Yet farming is a modern, highly mechanised business. It has to be, in order to keep our supermarket shelves stocked, our larders full and our appetites sated.
So while it is still possible – indeed, highly desirable – to seek out small traditional producers of top-quality Westcountry-grown and reared foodstuffs, a great deal of the day-to-day produce we consume comes from vast fields, cultivated by massive machines, regularly doused in fertilisers and pesticides. Animals too have been bred over many years to make them well-suited to the job they perform, whether that is giving us eggs, milk or meat. In short, we have been managing the agricultural landscape and all that lives in it, for centuries.
Against that background the level of opposition to genetically modified crops, seems excessive. It extended well beyond the extremist 'green' campaigners who ripped up test crops and dressed in gas masks and boilers suits. Ordinary consumers shunned any attempts to persuade them to accept what were quickly dubbed Franken-foods by the national tabloids. As a result any farmer or food producer tempted to give GM a try, even assuming it had been approved a decade ago, was quickly put off the whole idea in the certain knowledge that they would struggle to find buyers.
It has taken years for that attitude to change – but change it has. Environment Secretary Owen Paterson's view that it is "time to start a more informed discussion about the potential of GM crops" is one that must be taken seriously. As he says, there is absolutely no evidence that anyone consuming GM foods, which have been cultivated, harvested and eaten for years in the United States and elsewhere, has suffered any harm. There is also no sign, so far, that damage is caused to the wider environment by the planting of genetically modified crops.
By contrast, the potential benefits of genetic modification, from increased yields to a reduction in the need for potentially environmentally damaging pesticides, are significant. It would be quite wrong to prevent British farmers from competing in what is fast becoming a global market-place for genetic modification. There remain concerns about who benefits most from this technology – consumers and farmers or, as is feared, the giant bio-technology industry? But that is a different argument, with different solutions to the question of whether or not it is right to free up Britain's farmers to join in with the development of GM. Finally, it is worth highlighting another advantage of GM development particularly for the smaller, specialist farmers and food producers of the South West: their produce will continue to command a premium price.
