FARMERS have a responsibility to look after the landscape as well as farm their land, Poul Christenson, chairman of Natural England, said at a conference organised by the Three Counties Agricultural Society.

The theme of the conference was Nine Billion People: Feeding Britain in the Global Context, and Mr Christenson said the Government should increase research and development and farmers should do more to fund it. CAP reform was also important, but so was recognising the value of the natural environment.

He also said the Government needed to see systems in place to feed the population and that action was needed to reduce waste. “We throw away a third of our food one way or another,” he said.

Professor Sir John Beddington, chief scientific adviser to the Government and head of the Government office for science, told the 300 delegates: “We are looking at a fairly substantial increase in staple food prices over the next 20 to 30 years.”

Floods and droughts across the world were going to be more frequent so climate change was enormously important, he said. In the UK the forecast was for increasing summer mean temperature, particularly in the south, increasing winter rainfall and decreasing summer rainfall. “It is hard to see how you can sustain an argument against genetically modified crops,” he said.

The conference was chaired by Dick Mason, agricultural director for Lloyds TSB.