Major advice and research cuts in UK

The UK agricultural advisory service, ADAS has announced major restructuring by reducing £9 million from its annual budget, which will mean closing 18 local offices and cutting about 200 jobs. The move has come because the government has raised the cost recovery target for commercial consultancy to 63% up from 55% the previous year.
    According to Farmers Weekly, farmers need a national advisory organisation which is partly government funded. This allows government to help farmers comply with more stringent environmental legislation. Furthermore, food safety should not be left to free market economics—pesticide residues demand a national co-ordinated approach, the farming magazine concludes(1).

Further cuts
The UK Agricultural and Food Research Council’s funding, coming from the Ministry of Agriculture, has been reduced, forcing it to make redundancies from two research institutes. At the Institute of Arable Crops Research there will be 20 redundancies and three posts will not be filled.At Silsoe Research Institute, which conducts engineering and spraying research, 35 posts will go with 10 other posts which will not be re-filled(2).

R&D increase in the US
In the US, although funding in many areas covered by the Environmental Protection Agency has been cut, spending on pesticide research will increase from US$14.3 million in 1994 to US$15.6 million in 1995, up 9%(3).

1. Farmers Weekly, 4/3/94.
2. Agrow, 18/3/94.
3. Chemistry and Engineering News, 21/2/94.

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 24, June 1994, page 20]