Economic benefits

Agricultural biotechnology has the potential to:

• help individual farmers earn a living.
• make a significant contribution to the UK economy as a whole.
  
  •    Ensuring farmers can earn a living sustainably
  
  In 2006 Slovakia became the sixth EU country to plant biotech crops.  Spain continues to lead in Europe, with 148,000 acres planted, while plantings in France, Germany, Portugal, Slovakia and the Czech Republic reported a five fold increase in plantings (from 3,700 acres to 21,000 acres) compared to 2005.
  
  In an increasingly global and competitive market, UK farmers should be able to access this technology to enable them to compete with their counterparts from elsewhere in the world. A thriving farming sector also has a positive impact on our rural communities across the UK.
  
  •    The role of ag biotech in the UK economy
  
  The failure of several EU Member States to adopt a science-based approach to the introduction of agricultural biotechnology throughout Europe has driven research and development (R&D) in this area out of the UK, resulting in the loss of gifted scientists and their potential intellectual capital, which could take many years to reverse.
  
  This loss of knowledge and access to technologies has had, and will continue to have, serious ramifications for the UK’s ability to compete with the US and with the developing world (particularly East Asia) in terms of innovation and technology transfer.
  
  The decline in private sector jobs in agricultural research has been significant over the past 25 years. For example, between March 2000 and December 2001, 509 R&D jobs were lost at Chesterford Park and Ongar Research Station. Likewise, the closure of R&D and plant breeding at Monsanto’s site in Cambridge resulted in the loss of 50 full-time jobs, all of which were transferred to the United States.