Interactive European Network for Industrial Crops and Their Applications

INTRODUCTION Products from plants for both the food and non-food sector more than ever before are considered essential to the economy and well being of the EU. The drivers for change include: (1) sustainability of agriculture, the rural economy and industry at large; (2) environmental protection; (3) legislation and cost of non-compliance; (4) public opinion; and (5) international agreements of various types but with the common resolution of demanding renewable sustainable feedstocks e.g. Kyoto and WTO discussions. Countries in EU-15 have varied in their interest in and uptake of biorenewable materials, but it is probably a fair summarization of the position to say that uptake of biorenewables overall has been most successful in Germany. The development of non-food crops in recent decades was caused by the Common Agricultural Policy of EU and was essentially an alternative land use set aside for cereals, especially wheat, and oilseeds; oilseed rape, and sunflower. Rexen and Munch (1984) summarized recommendations for dealing with surplus wheat, which they envisaged being at a high level in EU by 2000. Their recommendations were: 1. That the EEC stimulates co-operation between agriculture and industry, starting by establishing agricultural refineries as demonstration units in various EEC countries. 2. That the EEC revises its present tariff system regarding cereals and cereal products and changes it to a coherent, simplified set of rules designed to stimulate efficiency in cereal production and in the industrial use of cereals, thus creating the basis for an internationally competitive biotechnology industry in the EEC. 3. That the use of straw as a fiber source should be stimulated by supporting a modernization of the present industrial process to obtain competitiveness with the wood based industries. 4. That the production of agricultural commodities in which the EEC is deficient—maize for starch, feed protein, vegetable oil, and cellulose fibers—should be stimulated by quality related premium prices of present commodities and development of new crops. 5. That significant basic research programs should be established in the industrial manufacture of cereal based products, including genetic engineering of plants and micro-organisms, purification of cereal components and their processing and modification into final products. Clearly, many policy changes have occurred since these primary recommendations were laid and certainly much research has been undertaken in the cereals area. Equally, change in world prices and increasing deregulation of markets through GATT/WTO negotiation have made agricultural crops more economically competitive as non-food feedstocks than in the past. However, the IENICA project (an Interactive European Network for Industrial Crops and their Applications) has confirmed that much of this potential (Table 1) has yet to be exploited. Table 1. Global non-food products from agriculture.