Unit 2A ProductionUnit 2A Production

AgricultureCoping with change

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Today we are going to look at a Today we are going to look at a mixture of changes and mixture of changes and

developmentsdevelopments• Until the 1970s European agriculture was fading – many people left their small farms and moved to the cities where they earned more. Large areas of France, Germany and Italy were being abandoned.

• So one of the first things the European Union did was to formulate the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). This set out to support small farmers and make sure the countryside continued to be worked.

• Food security – a modern theme – was a worry back then.

• During in wartime Europe, lack of food security had been a major problem

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CAPCAP•The CAP had five founding aims:

•To Increase productivity

•Give a fair standard of living for farmers

•To stabilise markets

•To provide regular food supplies

•To ensure reasonable prices for consumers

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How did they do this?How did they do this?• The price support mechanism• The Council of Ministers of the EU sets a

target price that farmers should receive for each product.

• They also set prices at which the EU will intervene:

• A floor (or ‘intervention’) price – if prices fall below this level, the EU intervenes and buys some of the product to stop prices falling further.

• A ceiling (or ‘threshold’) price – if prices rise above this level, the EU will allow imports of the product, so encouraging prices to fall back towards the target.

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How did they do this?How did they do this?• The structural policy

• Price support alone is not enough, especially for very small farms. The CAP therefore provides a number of other sources of support for agriculture.

• These include:

• Aid for farms facing specific problems; for example hill farms can obtain extra grants.

• Aid to encourage farmers to modernise or diversify; for example, there are grants for some forestry schemes

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Did they succeed?Did they succeed?

• Farmers could stay on the farms rather than abandoning them and moving to the towns. In particular in the ‘difficult’ areas

• Europe did produce much of its own food• Farmers did prosper and were able to invest

in their farms because they knew they would get a reasonable price for their produce.

• Food prices in the shops did not go up and down too much. In fact consumers got good value

But ……But ……

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What happened?What happened?

•This was the result!

We don’t grow sugarcane. Why was there too

much sugar?

What do you think the over-production of olive oil was called?

What do you think the

over-production of cereals

were called?

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There were huge silos in the UKThere were huge silos in the UK

• These contained many tonnes of grain, produced on huge cereal farms in the East of England – the minimum prices and subsidies applied to all farms – and the large English estates invested in cutting down hedges (which they were paid to do under improvement grants), larger machines and increased fertilizer and pesticides.

• All of which meant that they produced ever more grain that was bought by government at a guaranteed price.

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Elsewhere in EuropeElsewhere in Europe•Poor quality wine was produced in vast

quantities and was again bought up by government – hence the wine lakes.

•Milk production also exceeded national needs and the result was stored in ‘butter mountains’. Cheap butter was handed out to those on benefits, just to try and get rid of it.

•The milk was dried and was used in industry in food production or passed to developing countries as part of aid packages.

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Obviously this could not go on …Obviously this could not go on …• …as it has led to overproduction• CAP had to be reformed:• In 1991, arable farmers were paid to take up to

20% of their land out of production – this was called ‘set-aside’.

• Milk over supply was tackled by giving dairy farmers a quota – if they produced more than they were allowed then they were penalised.

• Pollution caused by stubble burning was banned.

• Farmers of unviable units were paid to retire early.

• Farmers were paid extra to behave in environmentally sensitive ways

• Subsidies were reduced

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Obviously this could not go onObviously this could not go on• Since 2000, further changes have taken place

– direct subsidies are being reduced still further – they will soon go.

• A good thing in many ways – for instance hill farmers are no longer encouraged to overstock as they are not paid per animal but per acre – this will give many overgrazed hillsides a chance to recover.

• Countryside stewardship grants are coming into place, e.g putting back hedgerows!! as they are environmentally friendly. Leaving unploughed edges to fields which have not pesticides applied all allow plants/animals corridors to exist in.

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DiversificationDiversification• Putting redundant building to different uses as

workshops or holiday cottages – grants are available to help and planning conditions are relaxed – development outside the town and village ‘envelopes’ are generally discouraged – but farm diversification is treated as an exception.

• Starting up farm shops, pick-your-own, Farmer’s markets and other retail mechanisms

• Growing willow or other non-agricultural crops is encouraged/helped – alternative fuels.

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Review:Review:

•What is CAP?

•What was it trying do?

•How did it set about doing it?

•What was the downside?

•When were the 2 major CAP reforms?

•What was done in the first reform?

•What happened in the 2nd major reform?

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Use these words to help you answer Use these words to help you answer these questionsthese questions

• Beef mountain

• ceiling price

• Countryside Stewardship

• Direct subsidies

• Diversification

• Food security

• Intervention price

• Overgrazing

• Price support mechanism

• Quota

• Set-aside

Genetic ModificationGenetic Modification

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What is genetic engineering?What is genetic engineering?• Ever since farmers settled down in one place,

they have picked out the best seeds to do the job to save for next year. As a result we have rice, wheat and potatoes which are bigger versions of their wild cousins.

• This selective breeding has been honed, so that there has been deliberate breeding of useful traits, both in plants and animals, to obtain traits that are useful in particular circumstances

• E.g. sheep – you get lowland types that do well on flat land – they produce more meat/wool etc

• Or highland types that are more surefooted, hardier, better at giving birth in difficult circumstances.

• However there is a ‘But ….’ to selective breeding.

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What is genetic engineering?What is genetic engineering?

• You interbreed between 2 individuals (plants or animals) which have 2 particular traits that you wish to combine. You may have to produce many offspring just to get one or 2 with the desired traits – and there is no guarantee that their offspring will have these traits –

• E.g. Small blond person marries tall dark one – and you can get any combination of small, medium and tall with fair, blond or in between. Take 2 tall fair ones and likely as not some of their children will be dark and short!

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What is genetic engineering?What is genetic engineering?• This where the genetic engineers come in. • They find out which gene does what – not

necessarily in the plant they want to change – and take that gene and put it into cells which they then use to make seeds of the plants/animals.

• The major use of GM so far that is widely used internationally is known as the Roundup system. Roundup is a pesticide. You make your grain/soya resistant to roundup. Then once the crop is growing you hit the whole field with roundup and all the pests are killed but the crop is unaffected. Because you can go in hard, you only have to go in once – they say – reducing pesticide use and cutting back on fuel (huge tractors use a LOT) and labour costs. These seeds are also designed to be high producers.

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What is genetic engineering?What is genetic engineering?•The added ‘they say’ is there because,

it has been shown that over time, the weeds develop their own resistance – could be the resistant genes get out into the wild maybe? And the extra yield does not hold up either – not without more fertilizer.

•That said, most of the maize, soya, oilseed rape and cotton produced in the Americas are now GM.

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What is genetic engineering?What is genetic engineering?• But there are worries about loss of genetic

diversity. • In New Mexico many local varieties of chillies

are grown – the biggest producers in each area are those best adapted to the climate and soil of that particular place – and they are all hand picked.

• A biotech organisation is proposing to develop a chilli which can be machine harvested – a huge saving on labour costs

• But – all those local varieties would be lost. • Also, a machine would just pick – it would not

know which ones were just ripe and those that would need more time to reach their best.

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The African Green RevolutionThe African Green Revolution

• As mentioned before, GM specialists say they are the only ones who can save Africa.

• They say they can produce drought resistant seeds, seeds that withstand salt in the soil, among other wonders that are needed to meet the challenges of global warming. However they have been talking drought resistance for some years – but we have not seen any yet!

• But to be fair, work on producing ‘golden rice’ is underway in Asia. This rice had been genetically modified to produce vitamin A. It is a shortage of vitamin A that causes widespread childhood blindness. All intellectual rights on its development has been waived – this means the farmers do not have to pay a premium and they can save seed from year to the next and re-use.

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What are possible future uses of What are possible future uses of biotechnology?biotechnology?

• Thus far we have pesticide resistant seeds that can reduce the use of pesticides and have an increased yield

• Also there are crops that are resistant to insect pests or viruses.

• Both these are helpful to farmers but have no direct benefit to consumers.

• However a few fruits and vegetables that have been developed have a longer shelf life – this is good for consumers but are as yet very small scale.

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The future??The future??• While taking new land into agriculture is seen as

environmentally negative, lots of land is currently not used as it is too salty or too alkaline.

• A salt tolerance gene from mangroves has been identified, cloned and transferred to other plants. The transgenic plants were found to be tolerant to higher concentrations of salt.

• This gene from a bacterium has also been used to generate salt-tolerant transgenic maize plants

• Such genes are a potential source for developing cropping systems for marginalised lands.

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The future??The future??•Following on from golden rice, another

research project in the pipeline is adding iron to rice.

• Iron, largely found in meat and eggs and some green vegetables, is very short in many poorer diets.

• It causes anaemia and still births and has been identified as a contributing factor in over 20% of maternal deaths in Asia and Africa.

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Can GMs reduce environmental Can GMs reduce environmental impact?impact?

• Many crops have developed as part of a system of ploughing and weeding. This leads to soil erosion and soil nutrient loss.

• In more traditional environments, minimum till has long been employed and is now spreading across the world, both in MEDCs and LEDCs, but many of the currently used crops are not well adapted to it.

• The roots structure needs to be changed as the soil will be harder and root diseases are more common than in tilled environment.

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GM medicines?GM medicines?

• Research into the potential for GM technology to produce vaccines and pharmaceuticals in plants.

• This could allow easier access, cheaper production, and an alternative way to generate income in LEDCs.

• Vaccines against infectious diseases of the gastro-intestinal tract have been produced in plants such as potato and bananas

• Another appropriate target would be cereal grains. An anti-cancer antibody has recently been expressed in rice and wheat seeds that recognises cells of lung, breast and colon cancer and hence could be useful in both diagnosis and therapy in the future

• Such technologies are at a very early stage in development

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Why do people worry about GM Why do people worry about GM foods?foods?

•There are 2 main areas that concern those who are against GM or transgenic modification:

•Potential human health impacts, including allergens, transfer of antibiotic resistance markers, unknown effects

•Potential environmental impacts, including: unintended transfer of trans-genes through cross-pollination, unknown effects on other organisms (e.g., soil microbes), and loss of flora and fauna biodiversity

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HomeworkHomework

•Using this website:

•http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/antenna/futurefoods/

•And any others you like,

•Take a view on whether GM foods are a good thing or not.

•Make a 3-slide presentation to support your view.