IF BIG biology means sequencing genomes, and big physics is about testing theories in particle accelerators, what does big ecology involve? Answer: tramping around hundreds of muddy fields counting weeds and insects while enduring the wrath of protesters.
For the past four years, critics have queued up to take shots at Britain鈥檚 farm-scale evaluation of three genetically modified crops, claiming it was at best a politically motivated irrelevance and at worst downright dangerous. Just about the only thing those for and against the trial could ever agree on was that this was ecological research on an unprecedented scale. But now the results are in (see 鈥淔arming 1, wildlife 0鈥� and 鈥淭aking the long view鈥�). So who are the winners and losers in the debate about the science?
The most obvious loser is the biotech industry. Contrary to its repeated claims that herbicide-resistant crops are kinder to wildlife, two out of the three tested were worse than conventional crops, while doubts remain about the third. The green groups opposed to the trial are winners in some respects but losers in others. Winners because of what the trial discovered; losers because throughout they claimed the experiment was biased and the researchers were in the pocket of the biotech industry. It wasn鈥檛, and they weren鈥檛. As the findings make clear, this was impartial research carried out without fear or favour.
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The British government, too, is both winner and loser. It loses because it is hard to see how it can now fulfil its ambition of opening Britain up to GM crops any time soon. It wins because it can share the credit for backing an evidence-based approach that has delivered genuinely impressive findings. The experiment will not help the cause of high-tech crop science, but what a superb advert it is for British ecology.
Clear winners include the scientists who carried out the trial, often in the face of adversity, and Brian Johnson of English Nature, the British government adviser whose concerns about herbicide-resistant crops led to the trial. Trust in government scientists has been at a low ebb since BSE. The success and evident integrity of the trial can only raise it.
Policy makers, the public and the media now have to face up to the trial鈥檚 compelling evidence that the herbicide treatments farmers use, as well as the crops they choose to grow, can dramatically influence farmland wildlife. The implications go way beyond the GM debate. The research proves that countries like Britain do not have to blow in the wind. They can use science to choose the level of farmland biodiversity they want and then set policies that reward farmers for adopting the practices that deliver it. The end of the farm trial could, if all concerned get it right, signal the beginning of a new and rational way of managing land. The British government 鈥� and Europe 鈥� should seize the chance.