The next agricultural revolution
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 19 June 2019
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We need to transform the way we grow food if we are to head off disaster - so say leading agronomists. But can it be done?
The modern agricultural industry, borne out of the Green Revolution that has multiplied crop yields since the 1960s, has contributed to multiple new crises - obesity, soil degradation, collapsing biodiversity and climate change. To address this "paradox of productivity" a whole new revolution is needed, according to Professor Tim Benton of the University of Leeds and think tank Chatham House.
The BBC's Justin Rowlatt travels to the world's longest running scientific experiment, a collection of wheat fields dating back to the 1840s at the Rothamsted agricultural research centre just outside London, to ask resident scientist John Crawford whether our past success in staving off global hunger can be sustained in the coming decades.
Plus what role should the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation play, especially as that body prepares to appoint new leadership? Justin speaks to the former UN Rapporteur for the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter.
Producer: Laurence Knight
(Picture: The Broadbalk research wheat fields at Rothamsted; Credit: BBC)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It is essential to life, but has been making hundreds of millions of us ill. |
| 0:22.8 | I'm Justin Rowlett, and today on Business Daily, we'll be discussing the future of food. |
| 0:28.7 | And to do that, we have come to see the world's longest running scientific experiment. |
| 0:34.8 | They've been investigating the impact of different fertilisers in the fields |
| 0:38.6 | I'm standing in for the last 176 years. Yep, ever since 1843. So here's the question, how can we make |
| 0:49.1 | the world's agricultural system produce more nutritious and less environmentally damaging food. |
| 0:55.8 | It is a big one, so stay tuned to Business Daily here on the BBC World Service. Now that is the sound of the wheat in this field. |
| 1:22.8 | And I can see wheat stretching away across the field. |
| 1:25.5 | I'm here with Professor John Crawford of Rothamstead |
| 1:29.2 | Research Centre. You're in charge of this experiment. Why is it so unique? You call it the |
| 1:33.6 | longest running scientific experiment in the world? It is. It was set up in 1843, as you said, |
| 1:39.8 | because we thought we were in the beginning of a food crisis. We didn't have enough manure to feed crops, to feed people. |
| 1:46.3 | And so the gentleman farmer, Sir John Laws, is that right? |
| 1:49.3 | Yeah, John Laws was a wealthy landowner, but also a bit of a polymath, |
| 1:52.8 | and wanted to crack that problem. |
| 1:54.6 | So he'd anticipated that we'd have a shortage of manure to fertilise the fields |
| 1:58.7 | as the population increased. |
| 2:00.3 | What was his response to that? |
| 2:01.6 | So his response to that was to try and create an artificial manure, which we call now superphosphate, |
| 2:07.4 | and he laid out these experiments to demonstrate just how wonderful those new products were. |
| 2:11.6 | I mean, in a sense, what we've got here is a sales bitch, isn't it? |
| 2:14.5 | It's exactly that. |
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