Hilary Benn, Britain’s Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced Britain’s new food strategy in a report, Food 2030, at the annual Oxford Farming Conference (Jan 4-6, 2010). The strategy unveils a national 20-year food-security manifesto aimed at improving the environmental and economic impact of food production.

The report supports crop technology, stating that science will be very important in developing crops that are less dependent on water, fertilizer or chemicals. Furthermore, the policy was created with the belief that “agriculture needs to produce more food, and impact less.”

In the report’s introduction British Prime Minister Gordon Brown says, “We need to produce more food without damaging the natural resources – air, soil, water and marine resources, biodiversity and climate – that we all depend on. We need to feed more people globally.”

This groundbreaking report from the UK represents an increasing number of countries that are supporting science like agricultural biotechnology because of its environmental and economic benefits.

You can read the full report here and learn more about the report’s impact in this article in The Globe and Mail.