- LONDON (Reuters) - Farmers
of the world must shift quickly to growing plants for industrial uses such
as oils and plastics to replace petrochemicals as the climate warms and
crude supplies run out, British scientists said on Monday.
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- "In the next 20 to 50 years we have to reverse our
dependency on fossil fuels," said Alison Smith of Britain's John Innes
plant research center. "We must breed for sustainability."
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- At a news conference, she complained that in the past
there had been a lack of coherent thinking, but that was now changing in
the face of the looming crisis.
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- Ian Crute, director of the Rothamsted plant-breeding
center in Hertfordshire, said it was not a matter of switching wholesale
out of growing crops for food but of correcting the balance.
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- "We have an opportunity here...to substitute our
dependency on fossil fuels," he added at the introduction of a report
by private scientists on non-food crops entitled "Growing the Future."
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- Not only was oil running out, but the world's population
was predicted to grow sharply over the next half century and had to be
fed. This would put huge strains on the world's economy.
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- "We have to get more productivity out of less land,"
he said.
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- The report noted that plants could produce plastics,
fuels, oils, medicinal drugs, insulators, fibres and fabrics, many of which
are currently made from crude oil.
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- Smith said it was not just a matter of genetic manipulation
of existing crops -- although that too had a place -- but of making better
use of plants currently grown for food.
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- Plants could also be bred for specific uses such as special
types of oils or fibers.
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- They could in effect be used as "green factories"
to produce whatever mankind needed in the future, she said.
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- Farmer and businessman Clifford Spencer -- who grows
crops for industrial uses -- said some research suggested that between
one quarter and one third of the farmland in Britain could switch to such
uses.
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- He said that while their arguments were not new, the
science to make it happen was, and businesses around the world were waking
up to the urgency and the possibilities.
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