§ Mr. Bodyasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how much of the money in the Estimates for the current year of his Department is intended to be spent on research and development into organic methods of agriculture; and what is the nature of that research and development.
§ Mrs. FennerMinistry research and development is concerned with the full range of farming systems, from organic farming and low-input farming through to high-input farming. Research is, however, rarely directed specifically to organic farming and no separate expenditure figures are available. The Ministry's advisory service is monitoring some key factors, for example, changes in soil analyses, crop yields and diseases on a commercial farm where organic farming is practised. The Ministry has funded an economic study of organic farming systems undertaken at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. Research funded by the Ministry is concerned with response to different levels of input including chemicals, e.g. fertilisers and pesticides. These investigations include nil inputs and therefore have relevance to organic systems. Other work relevant to organic farming includes projects designed to reduce or eliminate the use of pesticides by breeding crop varieties resistant to pests and disease attack, monitoring the incidence of pests and diseases to enable more accurate forecasting techniques to be developed, development of cultural methods of weed control and biological control of insect pests. These and other pieces of research undertaken by the Ministry are of relevance to organic farming.