38 I EUROPEAN SEED I EUROPEAN-SEED.COM S everal high level topics are battling for attention at the forefront of EU agriculture; the new methods grouped into the term plant breeding innovation, and the interface between pat- ents and plant breeders’ rights. European Seed sat down with Jan Huitema of the EU Parliament to get his take on some of the most controversial topics for EU agricul- ture at the moment. CHALLENGES TO EU AGRICULTURE EUROPEAN SEED (ES): What would you say are the main challenges for the EU agriculture at the moment and how should we face them? How can the seed sector help with these challenges? JAN HUITEMA (JH): A major challenge at the moment is how we can best produce enough high quality food for our EU pop- ulation in a sustainable way. Food that is healthy, has a longer shelf life, is tastier, and so on. In addition, consumers these days want a more diverse pallet than in the past, so there is a need for more diversity in the shops. This means that the agricultural sector needs to diversify and innovate to provide good and affordable food for all. Of course food waste is another major challenge. Each year 100 million tonnes of food in Europe is wasted or thrown away, which amounts to approximately 30-50 per cent of the food produced in the EU, so we need to find ways to bring these num- bers down. This will require a greater level of cooperation in the food chain to reduce the current levels of waste. However, I’m afraid that we have an out-dated regula- tory framework that is forming barriers to innovative ways of processing food waste. The sharing of best practices and prioritis- ing innovative projects should be encour- aged to combat food waste and losses. I’d like to stress that for every tonne of food waste avoided, approximately 4.2 tonnes of CO2 could be saved, which would have a significant impact on the environment. Besides this, of course climate change and biodiversity are big challenges, as is water quality and several others. All of the above needs to happen, keeping the environment in mind. We are losing a lot of natural resources so we need a resource efficient agriculture to address all of these challenges. INNOVATION ES: You have recently written the report on enhancing innovation and economic development in future European farm management. Why was it necessary to write this report? JH: According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), a rise in the global population, an increase in average incomes and changing consumer behaviour are expected to lead to greater demand for food in the coming decades, while the impact of climate change on nat- ural resources will compel us to reduce the ecological footprint of our food production system. This will require the agricultural sector to increase both its productivity and its sustainability, meaning that farmers will need to 'produce more with less'. Innovation is considered to play a key role in tackling this dual challenge of fostering green growth in farming. A prominent concept in this regard is precision agriculture, a relatively new ICT-based farm management approach that encompasses a wide range of tech- nologies, including satellite positioning/ navigation, sensors and drones. By pro- viding more precise information on their crops or animals, these techniques enable farmers to allocate their inputs (such as fertilisers, fuels, and animal feed) in a more targeted and efficient way, thus increasing their profitability and at the same time reducing their impact on the environment. Agricultural innovations can also make a contribution to other agro-ecological and economic objectives, such as combatting crop diseases and soil degradation; improving animal health and welfare; enhancing the competitiveness of the European agricultural sector; and developing new products, services, and jobs along the agri-food value chain. However, the adoption of novel agri- cultural technologies by European farms has been relatively modest until now. The reason for this is a variety of obstacles, including insufficient knowledge trans- fers from researchers to farmers, the high start-up costs of buying the neces- sary machinery, especially for small-scale farmers, and the fact that regulations are not always tailored to the specific needs of the agricultural sector. PLANT BREEDING INNOVATION ES: Lately there has been much talk (and controversy) about new methods which are used in plant breeding (the so called new breeding techniques). What is your take on this and should these methods be allowed without regulation? JH: It all starts with plant breeding, as plant breeding is absolutely crucial in our efforts to mitigate some of the challenges that we have ahead. The group of meth- ods that is often been classified as the new breeding techniques have great potential to help in those efforts. There is some controversy by certain groups in society, including the fraction The Greens/EFA in the EU Parliament, which are saying that allowing varieties that were bred with these new methods on the EU market without regulation, could lead to allowing GM varieties ‘via the backdoor’. Such people forget that we are using biotechnology in many other areas, such as for the production of insulin. At the moment there are 250 biotechnology health care products and vaccines avail- able to patients, many for previously untreatable diseases. You don’t hear anyone arguing against the use of insu- INNOVATION IN EU AGRICULTURE A CLOSER LOOK AT SOME OF THE KEY CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES THROUGH THE EYES OF EU PARLIAMENTARIAN JAN HUITEMA. BY: MARCEL BRUINS Jan Huitema