SOCIETY OF CHEMICAL INDUSTRY (SCI) HORTICULTURE GROUP – WRITTEN EVIDENCE (HSI0057)
Summary
This submission is made by the Horticulture Group of the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI). SCI was established in the nineteenth century as an organisation which could bring together all of those with an interest in chemistry. This is a role it continues to have through its linking of those working in commercial aspects of chemistry with those in academia. It has this role in respect of Horticulture which it achieves through the existence of a Horticulture Group, (HG), the publication of peer reviewed journals and through a series of programmes designed to help younger workers access training and careers in horticulture.
We welcome the House of Lords Inquiry which we believe to be both needed and timely We have commented on those topics which we believe to represent areas where the SCI HG is qualified to express an informed view.
The challenges facing the horticulture sector in UK are 1) to remain viable in the face of significant and growing international competition, 2) an increasing level of bureaucracy, partly as a consequence of the decision to leave the EU, 3) increased issues in respect of plant heath, some related to climate change and others to the loss of agrochemicals, and 4) the ability to understand and integrate new technologies such as gene editing (GE) and artificial intelligence (AI).
Of all the food production sectors in UK, horticulture is the one most vulnerable to the impact of a changing climate. This is a feature of both the variety of crops within the sector and their inherently fragile fruits or vegetables. The sector is a significant user of water which is impacted by current climatic changes. The predicted effects of climate change most likely to impact on horticultural crops are: Changes in temperature, increases in atmospheric Carbon dioxide concentrations, changes in rainfall and increased climatic variability.
Attracting more skilled people into horticulture is critical to its future success. A Key question is what sorts of skills ae needed. The varied nature of horticulture makes this a difficult question to answer. It is a question which the SCI HG is currently attempting to answer through a study of current educational provision. Initial results suggest that the provision of University courses related to plants is more limited than it should be.
Introduction: who are we?
0.1 The Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) was established in 1881 and has its Headquarters in Belgrave Square, London. Although its membership is predominantly from the UK it has significant numbers of members in North America, Europe and Asia. It came into existence to provide a forum where those interested in any branch of chemistry, from pharmaceuticals through agrochemicals and dyes to heavy chemicals, and in academic institutions, research institutes and commercial companies could benefit from working together and sharing information. The Society publishes seven peer reviewed scientific journals including “The Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture”, and “Pest Management Science”, both of which contain papers with horticultural content.
0.2 The SCI Horticulture Group (HG) similarly includes educationalists, consultants, producers and researchers involved with horticulture both within the UK and internationally. The Group has a particular interest in ways in which younger people can be attracted into horticulture. It sponsors, through its annual David Miller Award, travel and research grants for Post Graduate Students. In recent years it has also been one of the funders of the Royal Society of Biology’s (RSB) Plant Health Undergraduate Student Award Programme. It is currently engaged in a substantial study of the current health of the UK provision of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in horticulture and in the closely related disciplines of botany and plant science. The results of this study will be made public at a Stakeholder Event being held at SCI’s London HQ on 16th May 2023. This study has involved asking and attempting to answer the questions What is horticulture in today’s world? and What core skills are required by the horticulture industries? The group has run a number of scientific meetings but has also been present at popular events, such as the BBC Gardeners World Event at the NEC.
0.3 This response This response to the Inquiry is submitted on behalf of the SCI Horticulture Group following discussion and consultation within the Group. We welcome the existence of this Inquiry. We comment on the topics listed by the House of Lords Committee as follows:
1) Key challenges, risks and opportunities facing horticulture
1.1 Background. Horticulture is a major UK Industry which employs significant numbers of people. It is also very varied involving the production of annual and perennial fruit crops, vegetable crops and ornamental plants, bulbs and flowers. These may be produced in open field conditions or with the protection of glass houses or polythene coverings. Commercially it involves large international companies but also large numbers of small businesses who are distributed across the country and so provide employment in many of our small towns and villages. In the recent past UK research in horticulture has had a major international reputation through centres such as East Malling (now NIAB East Malling) and the National Vegetable Research Station (now UK National Vegetable Gene Bank), The RHS Wisley Gardens and Universities, such as London, Reading and Warwick. The activity in many of these centres has been greatly reduced over recent years.
1.2 Challenges The challenges facing the horticulture sector in UK are 1) to remain viable in the face of significant and growing international competition, 2) an increasing level of bureaucracy; partly as a consequence of the decision to leave the EU, 3) increased issues in respect of plant heath; some related to climate change but others to the loss of agrochemicals, and 4) the ability to understand and integrate new technologies such as gene editing (GE) and artificial intelligence (AI). That current commercial horticulture includes significant numbers of very small firms, means that they are vulnerable to externally mediated requirements for extra administration. For some the addition of just one more Form can result in a decision to end the business.
Small businesses can in addition find it impossible to finance the acquisition of expensive capital equipment. While a more capital-intensive industry can seem like progress to some, the loss of small horticultural producers can have a significant impact on overall rural employment and on the viability of many villages. It is relevant to look at the impact of mechanical harvesting for fruit crops. In California increasing capital costs, especially related to harvesting, has resulted in most of that State’s cherry production now being in the hands of less than 10 very large companies but with significant sociological impact.
1.3 Risks Labour has always been a key component of horticulture. Planting annual crops and harvesting them and harvesting fruit crops need large numbers of people for short periods. Timing is critical. Crops need to be harvested at a defined developmental stage. Unlike cereal crops the window for harvesting is short. Machinery Rings which work well in arable agriculture are not applicable to fruit harvesting. Labour must be available when crop development dictates that crops must be harvested or they will be unusable. Increased mechanisation has for a considerable time been held up as the solution to this issue. For most fruit crops it is not yet a reality. In the 1970s mechanical harvesting was seen as the future of UK apple production. Over 50 years on it is yet to be available. AI may be able to record the exact spot where a fruit is growing but the infrastructure of the tree’s branches may preclude access without damage to the fruit, while the speed that harvesters can move means that mechanical harvesting will always be slower than well motivated human hands. That such machinery will become available remains a hope but whether it will be affordable by small fruit businesses is less certain.
Until recently much fruit and vegetable harvesting was carried out by European labour. This is no longer possible as the number of seasonal permits available from the Home Office is only a fraction of the number needed. These are currently issued on an annual basis. In contrast decisions on the planting of perennial crops are decisions for a number of years. Perennial horticulture needs certainty over at least five-year blocks of time. It had been hoped that the shortfall in overseas labour would have been met by UK workers. This has not however been the case. One of our members who was responsible for running a large estate which included in its range of crops, fruit crops such as apple, commented that they had found it impossible to recruit local labour who could be relied upon to turn up, resulting in the business moving its emphasis from fresh produce to fruit juices. The availability of labour is a key risk and a major blockage to the development of UK horticulture and a desire to supply from the UK more of the food which we consume.
1.4 Opportunities At the same time as horticulture faces the risks identified above, it has also the potential to benefit from developments in GE and AI. The principal development in horticultural technology from around 1970 until 2010 was the provision of agrochemicals to control weeds, pests and diseases. Every year during this period saw the introduction of new herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. From the mid 1960s until 2005 the British Crop Protection Council ran an International Conference attended by up to 2,000 International delegates at which the key session was that at which new pesticidal molecules were introduced. The era when crop protection was seen to be based on protection from externally applied chemicals which either precluded infestation or eliminated pathogens has passed. The introduction of new molecules has slowed and there are real concerns about the health and environmental impact of such chemicals. Horticulture was heavily dependant on chemical technologies. All horticultural species are heavily impacted by weed growth and most fruits and vegetables are at risk from fungal pathogens and insect pests. The loss of chemicals due to increased regulation, has been a major concern for the horticultural industry. Regulation has often been less strict in some of our competitor nations.
At the present time GE holds out the prospect of enhancing and introducing resistance to pest and diseases into many of our horticulture plant species. At the recent round of RSB plant health studentships applications, around three quarters related to studies which would have aided the development of disease or pest resistance using molecular methods to modify the crop genome. Targeted genome editing is seen as a way of producing crop plants which are not susceptible to pests and diseases. GE also has the potential to alter quality traits in crop plants both in terms of production characteristics, duration of the harvesting period and the ability to be held in store post-harvest and while retaining acceptable food quality characteristics.
Identifying where crops are to be planted or where fruits or vegetables are to be harvested from is important to the key phases of planting and harvesting. It is also key to management during the growing life of the crop. Issues relating to this could be helped or managed by AI. In addition, AI has the potential to aid weed control by helping both the spatial recognition of where there are weeds and helping to direct weed removal to that place. It also has the potential to help harvesting and planting of crops.
The loss of the means to use chemical control has led to an increase in options for biological control. This can be using insects to control other insects, nematodes to control fungi or fungi such as Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF) or ento-pathogenic fungi to control pests. The development of biological control represents a means of helping both conventional and organic horticulture
2) The Impact of Climate Change on Horticulture and How it Might be Mitigated
2.1 Introduction Of all the food production sectors in UK, horticulture is the one most vulnerable to the impact of a changing climate. This is a feature of both the variety of crops within the sector and their inherently fragile structures; soft fruits such as strawberries and raspberries are vulnerable to physical damage. In addition the sector is a major user of water which is being impacted by current climatic changes. Asking what predicted effects of climate change are likely to have the greatest impact on horticultural crops suggests the following:
2.2 Changes in Temperature. The rise in average temperatures in the UK is increasing the range of crops which can be grown. The UK now has a wine industry which hardly existed 20 years ago. There is the potential to grow crops which need higher temperatures such as tea, tobacco and fruits like apricots. In addition, increases in mean temperature may allow us to produce a wider range of crops which contain chemicals for use in the food industry as spices or for processing into pharmaceuticals. This is positive for us. In addition GE offers opportunities to modify plants so as to enhance their ability to cope with a different range of ambient temperatures. This should be a major area of future research activity.
2.3 Increasing CO2 A rise in ambient CO2 will benefit all of our crops but particularly those which depend upon a C3/Calvin Cycle mode of biochemistry to fix the products of photosynthesis. This is something which previously was important for plants grown under glass. This has scope to be enhanced by molecular assisted plant breeding, GE Methods, which should be able to enhance the proportion of photosynthate which ends in saleable food product i.e. to increase the harvest index.
2.4 Changes in Rainfall. Rainfall seems likely to increase in some parts of the country, probably the NW but decrease in others, especially the SE. This seems likely to increase a disparity and a restriction of what crops can be grown where, which already exists. Unequivocally there will be need a to further develop the technologies to improve the efficiency of the application of water. This is also an area which seems most likely to benefit from the use of GE in plant breeding. It will also benefit from the use of symbiotic organisms such as arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) which can help crop plants to adapt to environmental stress by acting as biosensors and provide advanced warning of decreasing water availability and so help crop plants to adapt their metabolism.
2.5 Increased Climatic Variability. This is perhaps the most important consequence of climate change. For example we know that the frequency of later frosts dictates the commercial potential to grow many perennial crops The apple industry in the North was lost largely as a result of the higher frequency of late frosts, which increased the number of years where there was no crop production, compared to other part of the UK or of continental Europe. Climate change will increase the variability and intensity of a range of factors, potentially resulting in a greater frequency of events such as late frosts. The frequency and intensity of bouts of heavy rain, of snow and of hail- stones seems likely to increase. This makes the planning of water use schedules more difficult. Hail can destroy fruit crops. This will impact planting and picking schedules for vegetable crops. Climate change will also increase the frequency of storms and high winds. All of these will impact the variability of the amount of crop produced from year to year. This is difficult in terms of business cash flow. This is an area where crop breeding is likely to have little potential to help. AI may be able to help devise changes to growing techniques. This may be an area where there is need for a Government backed Insurance Scheme if we want crop production of this type to continue in the UK.
3) Skills and Recruitment Challenges Particularly in Relation to Skilled Jobs
3.1 Introduction Attracting more skilled people into horticulture is critical to its future success. A Key question is what sorts of skills are needed. The varied nature of horticulture makes this a difficult question to answer.
The difficulty can perhaps be illustrated with an example drawn from the production of Top Fruit. That industry as a whole requires:
Taxonomic skills so to be able to cope with the large numbers of varieties which currently exist and the larger number which will exist in the future.
3.2 The Skills Need That we need all of the above skills to achieve the aims of just one part of horticulture, indicates the complexity of the total needs of the Industry as a whole. Most of the above needs identified for fruit would be replicated for other parts of horticulture such as vegetable, bulb and ornamental plant production. The full range of skills, for each part of the industry, seems likely to come from a range of starting qualifications. The key questions are thus How do you combine elements of all these into a horticultural qualification? or How do you provide for all of these skills to be available to horticultural producers? These are not a questions which are unique to horticulture. They are also questions in other areas as distinct as medicine and law. Horticulture needs to look-out and learn from how other professions have dealt with the issue of attracting the range of professional skills required.
3.3 A Plant Aware Workforce Beyond the range of skills identified above as the needs of just one limited sector of horticulture a “plant aware” workforce, trained and educated about plants at higher education level will be critical to implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of Zero Hunger, Good Health and Well-being, Clean Water and Sanitation, Affordable and Clean Energy, Climate Action, Life on Land and more. To achieve this “plant aware” workforce, suitable education and training must be available. However, there are serious concerns as evidenced by reports produced by government, learned societies and industry bodies, highlighting that skills shortages are currently rising in most plant related industry sectors including ornamental horticulture, horticultural (edible) crop production and plant science research.
3.4 The SCI HG Education Study In light of a past decade which has seen a number of reports, the SCI HG set up a study to investigate whether current Higher Education (HE) curricula for courses advertised as teaching about plants were responding to the skills shortages identified. Overwhelmingly the reports considered individual sectors and their particular needs. However, we believe it is imperative to consider the issue holistically as sectors are inter-linked and interdependent. Accordingly we sought to cut across the traditional boundaries of plant science, horticulture and botany and to include in our study all courses that would be expected to teach a significant amount of plant related material.
A search was done of The Universities and Colleges Admission Service (UCAS) data base using the terms Horticulture, Plant, Botany. Plant also brings up "heavy machinery and industrial plants"- i.e. engineering courses, so these were removed. A search using the term “crop” identified no additional courses. University websites were then consulted to determine if courses still existed and to obtain detail on the modules being offered within the programme. An initial search using the above terms identified 273 courses at 68 institutions which, following the University website consultation, was reduced to 127 courses at 32 institutions who offered a notionally specific degree in Plant Science/Horticulture/Botany. The 127 courses contained 3165 modules. These courses were scored against 63 criteria so as to assess the mix of plant and non-plant material.
A module could have multiple scores e.g. animal genetics, plant genetics, microbial genetics might be scores against a general genetics module. Each module has an average of 3.3 scores demonstrating that multiple subject areas are covered by modules. Modules identified as having some plant content (at least one score against a plant criteria) represented 23% of all teaching/delivery. Plant ecology, the highest scored plant criteria, accounted for 2.3% of all teaching/delivery. Ranking all courses, in order, based on the proportion containing plant related modules revealed that only 1/3rd of the 127 courses identified had 50% of modules or more that have one score against a plant criterion. This seemed rather low for courses that were identified as plant specific by the keywords provided for such searches by the HEIs themselves. This is a matter of concern. A detailed analysis is continuing so as to obtain a full picture of the teaching/delivery of these "Horticulture/Botany/Plant Science courses"
4 The Availability of Funding for Science, Research and Development to Enable Innovation
4.1 The impact of recent changes Forty years ago the UK had five research institutes, with an International reputation for excellence, specifically focused on different aspects of Horticulture. In addition a national agricultural advisory service ran a series of horticultural development stations and a network of horticultural advisors. During the 1980’s much of this was demolished. The number of research institutes dealing with any aspect of horticulture was reduced to three, all however as parts of institutes with a wider remit. In addition most horticultural advice was privatised and most development stations closed or refocused. A clear example of this can be illustrated by work in the area of the mineral nutrition of fruit trees and the related area of post-harvest fruit storage. In 1979, working as part of the International Society of Horticultural Science (ISHS) community, scientists at East Malling Research Station (EMRS) inaugurated a series of international conferences on mineral nutrition and fruit storage. These have continued, at 3-4year intervals, with the most recent being held in 2022. The early conferences in the series were dominated by contributions from UK scientists. Although the conferences have increased in numbers of delegates and the number of countries represented, demonstrating the continued importance of this area of science, at the most recent conference there was only 1 UK participant. This provides a clear example of the decrease in horticultural research in UK and a reduction in the science base targeted towards the UK industry. The research needed to inform fruit producers tends to be long term, problems with the productivity of woody perennial crops can take many years to become apparent and so is not easily researched using a three-year grant cycle
8) Lessons Learned from Horticultural Policy and Practice from Overseas
8.1 Learning from Overseas Practice The current impact of Climate Change means that the UK industry can learn from countries which are currently experiencing climates not dissimilar to the ones likely to be the normal for UK in the near future. Methodology for dealing with heat stress in fruit crops has been in use in Mediterranean countries for some time as has technology for economising on the use of water as a scarce resource. The UK could learn much from countries such as France, Italy and Israel who are international leaders in these fields In the recent past collaborative working and shared learning was encouraged by participation in EU Framework Programmes and the Initiatives run by COST(European Cooperation in Science and Technology). The UK exit from the EU has ended most of this. There is a clear need for the links encouraged in the past to be reinstated.
9) The Effectiveness of Government Planning and Policy Making in Relation to Horticulture
9.1 Government Policy for Horticulture In recent years there has been no clear and consistent policy from Government aimed at boosting the UK horticulture sector and its contribution to UK food production. Commercial producers have not had the guidance they have needed to commit to enterprises, many which are long term in nature and where the cash flow can be seriously negative for a number of years. All enterprises of this type are risky but where it is unclear whether Government is serious about more of the UK food need being met from home production, then it is clear that many will feel unable to commit to an uncertain future; something which we are seeing currently with orchard removal and reduced soft fruit and vegetable plantings. Climate Change related factors impacting horticultural production, especially increased climatic variability, need Government to provide clearer policy steers, reduced Form filling, easier access to overseas labour and in some areas Insurance.
10 April 2023