Biotech industry calls for €450m investment in food innovation

The agriculture sector has called on the government to invest €450 million in food technology to maintain the Netherlands’ status as a world leader.

Biotech companies and research institutions such as Wageningen university say €1 billion is needed by 2040 for plant breeding and innovation, partly to deal with the challenges of climate change.

Some 50 companies and research institutions petitioned economic affairs minister Heleen Herbert and junior agriculture minister Silvio Erkens to allocate more funding to the sector in a meeting at Wageningen this week.

Sjoujke Heimovaara, president of the executive board at Wageningen University and Research, said the industry needed its own equivalent of Project Beethoven, the government-back scheme to invest €2.5 billion in the Eindhoven region to support major technology companies such as ASML.

“Crops need to be constantly bred to withstand new diseases, higher temperatures because of climate change and the higher salt content in ground water,” she told the Telegraaf.

“We are still a world leader in this area, but if we don’t take action we will soon be selling our seeds and machines for harvesting these crops in China.”

Heimovaara said investing public money in facilities for the agriculture industry was justified by the wider economic benefits. “It is basic infrastructure,” she said. “You wouldn’t ask Albert Heijn to pay separately for using the motorways.”

Erkens tempered expectations that the cabinet could find €450 million for the sector, but he said there could be opportunities to use existing subsidies for food innovation.

“For example, money has been set reserved to limit the use of crop protection measures,” he said. “We could use some of that for these purposes.”