United Kingdom

Agriculture involves approximately 75 percent of the land in the United Kingdom, employing more than half a million people and contributing about £6.6 billion a year to the UK economy. UK farmers produce about 8 percent of cereal and oilseed crops in the EU, including wheat, barley, oil seed rape and oats, and are the fifth largest producer of sugarbeet. Over the last decade, research and development of GM crops has occurred in Farm Scale Evaluations (FSE). While the UK government has concluded there is no science-based case for a blanket ban on GM crops, UK farmers are not commercially growing any GM crops in the UK.