An extra £7 million of funding for horticulture research has been announced, which aims to improve yields and quality in the UK horticulture sector, whilst adopting more sustainable farming practices.

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The funding will go to the Horticulture and Potato Initiative for research carried out by academic and industrial partnerships. There have been mounting calls in recent years from UK and EU governments to increase both spending on research and development and the speed at which new developments are rolled out to help farmers in the field.

One of the areas on which the Initiative will focus is helping growers adapt to a changing climate. Many varieties of the food crops grown in the UK have been tailored to specific local climate conditions. This means that even slight changes in growing seasons, water availability and weather extremes could cause dramatic reductions in production if not countered with research expertise.

The initiative will also emphasise the need for any increases in production to be sustainable. BBSRC said increasing demand from a global population estimated to reach nine billion by 2050 will require increases in production, but this must be done on proportionally less land and with less water, fertiliser and other inputs.

Dr Celia Caulcott, BBSRC Director of Innovation and Skills said, "Any research initiative to improve fruits and vegetables should start with the end product - what do we as consumers want to eat. That is why we're excited about this initiative. We can combine the scientific expertise of academic researchers with the real-world expertise of industry in the hope of delivering bigger yields of better quality fruit and veg for us all to buy."

Speaking at the Oxford Real Farming Conference in January, respected food policy author and former upland farmer Tim Lang said that, if policy makers are serious about food security, radical changes need to be made to maintain production, reduce impact on the environment and promote more equitable distribution. He advocated, “A good thing for UK food security would be to turn your pig farm into a horticulture farm.”

Professor Lang went on to say, “We need less farming, more horticulture. More plants, less animals. Exciting things are already happening; in towns people are growing, people are engaging with horticulture projects in urban areas.”

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