Policy Hub POSTNotes set for publication following three-month fellowships
Two POSTNotes produced by the Food Systems Policy Hub’s Policy Fellows covering soil management and genome editing are to be published in the new year following the completion of the second fellowship scheme between N8 AgriFood and the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology (POST).
In October David Rapley from the University of Sheffield and Megan Tresise from the University of Leeds began a three-month fellowship at POST, working in Westminster to produce a POSTnote from start to finish. Their work has included scoping the topic, conducting interviews with senior stakeholders from across academia, government, industry and the not-for-profit sector, then drafting, editing and finalising the document.
The fellowships were open to applications from doctoral students registered at one of the N8 Universities (Durham, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and York) working in an area of agrifood research, and marked the second collaboration between the N8 AgriFood Food Systems Policy Hub and POST in offering the placements following the inaugural joint fellowship in 2020.
Ahead of the publication of David and Megan’s POSTnotes in the new year, we caught up with them to find out more about their work:
David Rapley, The University of Sheffield
What do your current studies at The University of Sheffield involve?
My PhD focusses on the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms behind rice resistance to the parasitic weed, Striga. Striga causes devastating cereal crop yield losses of 40-100%, and causes economic yield losses up to USD 7 billion, affecting the poorest subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.
How does your Fellowship at POST fit in to the current food policy landscape?
My Fellowship at POST is on gene edited food crops. With UK (and EU) regulation on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) under review to exempt plants developed by certain types of gene editing, the potential for crops is huge. My POSTnote will explore the development of gene edited food crops, and examine a range of issues surrounding this, including specificity, traceability and public perceptions.
In September 2021, the UK Government published a response to their recent consultation on the use of genetic technologies, saying that regulation is changing for plants with genetic changes that could have been achieved by traditional breeding, or which could have occurred naturally. These plants will become exempt from GMO field trial regulations in England by the end of 2021. Also, the Government is looking to bring forward primary legislation to amend the existing definition of a GMO and exempt certain crops.
The Government is also looking at how these products might enter the market. This aligns with several strategies such as:
- The UK Innovation Strategy 2021 which mentions the use of biotechnology to drive a new
‘bioeconomy’ and to tackle challenges to food security, climate change and biodiversity.
- The National Food Strategy 2021 which forecasts the use of modern science, such as for crop genetics.
This is a complex regulatory area as gene edited crops are regulated differently across the world. Some countries for example exempt certain gene edited crops from GMO regulation (including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, USA), while other countries tightly regulate all gene edited crops as GMOs (including EU countries and New Zealand).
The EU has published a report in 2021, saying the regulatory definition of a GMO for new genomic techniques is ‘not fit for purpose’, and is planning a consultation for 2022.
What do you hope your work with POST will achieve?
I hope that this work will provide MPs and Peers with an overview of gene editing in plants, gene edited products in development and the specificity and traceability of the gene editing technology.
I am also exploring the implications of gene edited food crops on social, economic, environmental and health factors. I hope for my work to help inform the discussions surrounding detection of gene editing in food crops, domestic/international trade, intellectual property, transparency, labelling, consumer choice, and public perceptions.
Megan Tresise, University of Leeds
What do your current studies at the University of Leeds involve?
My PhD research at Leeds focuses on understanding and mitigating agricultural emissions under the net zero by 2050 target. I use Life Cycle Assessment techniques to account for farming emissions and estimate the global warming impact of management practices. I then use that data to model mitigation options for farmers, such as reducing fertiliser usage or switching to organic.
How does your Fellowship at POST fit in to the current food policy landscape?
My POSTnote is a synthesis of the evidence of the threats to England’s agricultural soils (e.g. carbon loss), which impacts the wider system benefits that soils provide, including food production, climate regulation and biodiversity. It also explores soil stewardship options to restore soil systems that land managers are increasingly using, as well as monitoring of soil health indicators and policy initiatives in this area. My POSTnote is highly relevant to the current food-policy landscape in a few ways. Soil underpins the food system, yet many intensively farmed soils are depleted of organic carbon and biodiversity, and are at risk of erosion and compaction. This affects the benefits that soils provide us, including food production, and wider ecosystem functions, such as water and climate regulation.
Agriculture is currently faced with a somewhat uncertain and difficult transition period away from the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and into new UK-based Environmental Land Management schemes. The standards that make up the Sustainable Farming Incentive ELM scheme have a strong soil focus, especially soil health, and Defra have already set a target of managing soils sustainably by 2030.
There is an increasing body of research into innovative methods of measuring soil health, e.g. Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and spectroscopy, to build our understanding at both farm and national scale. Research evidence for soil stewardship practices that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and put organic material back onto the land, e.g. cover cropping, biochar and manure, is developing and will give us a better understanding of how to cope with the spatial complexity of farming in the UK (i.e. across soil types and farm enterprises).
What do you hope your work with POST will achieve?
I hope that this POSTnote is useful to the researchers and policymakers tackling the soil health challenge. It will be the product of several weeks of invaluable and interesting interviews and reviews with key academics and stakeholders, so I look forward to seeing it published and available for use. On a professional level, I think this opportunity has given me the skills to impartially translate research evidence into material suitable and useful for policymakers, so I hope that I can use these skills in a research-policy career after my PhD.