A new research initiative has been launched by Research Councils responsible for allocating the UK's R&D funding, which they promise will support projects that will help provide solutions to key challenges affecting the sustainability of the UK crop and livestock sectors.

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The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), working in partnership with the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), announced the formation of the Sustainable Agriculture Research & Innovation Club (SARIC) on Tuesday (27 May). SARIC – a public-private partnership – will be investing up to £10 million over the next five years to address key challenges to the food and farming sectors, as identified by industry.

A rapidly increasing global population, climate change and dwindling fossil resources are putting strain on attempts to achieve global food security. The partners of SARIC believe that they can produce solutions by bringing together "the environmental and biological science research base" and industry partners. Companies involved in the 'club' include Anglian Water, Bayer CropScience, Elsoms Seeds, Marks and Spencer, Monsanto, PGRO, Syngenta and URSULA Agriculture.

SARIC launched its first funding call on Tuesday; £5M of funding has been made available, and another funding call will be made over the coming months. SARIC has identified key challenges, on which research will focus:

• Resilient and robust crop and livestock production systems
• Predictive capability & modelling for new technologies, tools, products & services

Dr Celia Caulcott, BBSRC Director of Innovation and Skills said on the research initiative's launch, "These clubs are an excellent route to companies engaging with our excellent research base, encouraging partnership in addressing some of the major challenges that the world faces."

Professor Iain Gillespie, NERC Director of Science added, "This innovative partnership will address one of the key challenges facing our society; how we are going to feed a growing population in a time of rapid environmental change. By working in partnership with businesses and other research councils, we can bring a range of perspectives to bear on these issues, and ensure that the excellent UK research base is translated into tangible benefits for society."

Feeding consumers Vs. Empowering citizens

Although SARIC promises to investigate questions of food security, the approach could be called into question, in light of calls for more democratic, reflexive R&D allocations which have been growing in volume in recent years. Sustainable agriculture advocates have suggested that earnest attempts to achieve food security should reframe the question of 'feeding a growing world population' as one of "empowering a growing population to feed themselves."

Questioning the narrative of 'feeding the world,' sustainable food advocates, including Campaign for Real Farming founder and three-time winner of the Glaxo/ABSW Science Writer of the Year Award Colin Tudge have pointed out that "UN demographers tell us that although human numbers are rising the percentage rise is going down and should reach zero by 2050 – so the numbers should level out. Nine and a half billion is as many [people] as we will ever have to feed – and we already produce 50% more than will ever be needed. The task, then, is not to increase output, but to produce what we do produce (or even less) by means that are kinder to people, livestock, and wildlife, more sustainable, and more resilient."

Commenting on the funding club, Tom Macmillan, Soil Association Director of Innovation said, "It's great that the research councils are working to make sure research addresses practical challenges. However, the big gap is in research to help working farmers find effective, low cost solutions to the challenges they face. We're piloting farmer-led 'field labs' and other grassroots approaches to innovation through our… Future Farming Programme, giving farmers a direct say in research decisions."

Although a BBSRC spokesperson said on Wednesday that "typically we approach this sort of thing [funding calls] with an open mind," and assured that grants would be awarded to the most deserving applicants, with the greatest scope for solving problems, the fact remains that, despite calls from academics, UN rapporteurs and the seminal IAASTD report for research decisions to come from the bottom-up, public research money continues to be spent on areas identified by large companies, rather than farmers in the field, or their customers. This is especially concerning as 90 percent of funding will come from NERC and BBSRC, and "new… products" are listed as one desired outcome of the club's spending.

IAASTD, which was compiled by over 400 expert scientific authors, notes of top-down, biotechnology-focused R&D investment "While this attracts investment in agriculture, it can also concentrate ownership of agricultural resources." The report advocates instead for policy makers to "focus investment on local priorities identified through participatory and transparent processes, and favour multifunctional solutions to local problems."

Questioned as to the part farmers, consumers and others on the receiving end of research outcomes have had to play in the formation of the 'club' and its priorities, and the conclusions drawn by experts on the research industry, a BBSRC spokesperson said on Wednesday, "As research councils we want to fund high quality projects that will also be transformative for the agricultural sector; a sector which wishes to be environmentally sustainable and economically profitable.

"The funds available are to allow new, innovative ways to address challenges to sustainable agriculture, and to allow for dispersed existing knowledge (current research outputs) to be brought together in ways relevant to decision-makers in agricultural supply chains."

Current agricultural research allocations see 15 percent of spending going towards GM crops, whilst only 1 percent is spent on agroecology, which the World Bank-commissioned IAASTD report identifies as a key means of fixing the food system.