More Flexible Pesticide Approach Needed to Help EU’s Ability to Produce Its Own Food

Von Westenholz is chief executive of the Crop Protection Association UK Ltd.

Von Westenholz is chief executive of the Crop Protection Association UK Ltd.

The British government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) recently announced how it will implement CAP reform in England following its recent consultation, including a decision to shift 12% from Pillar 1 (direct payments) to Pillar 2 (rural development), down from 15% originally proposed. DEFRA also said it will adhere to the standard measures on Greening and will hold further discussions with stakeholders on options which should be included in the Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs).

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Under the recently agreed reforms, farmers will be required to manage an initial 5% of land as EFAs – arable land or pasture that is taken out of crop production – in order to qualify for their full basic payment. There have been reports that the European Commission are “fully committed” to prohibiting pesticide use in EFAs – an extremely worrying approach that is typical of the sort of inflexible and overly prescriptive view of pesticide use that is hampering European farmers as they strive to produce safe and affordable food.

The Crop Protection Association is a key voice of the UK plant science industry, promoting the role of modern plant science in safeguarding our food supply from seed to shelf. The association represents companies in the UK engaged in the development and manufacture of plant science technologies including pesticides.

We are particularly concerned that there are aspects of the reformed CAP which will take an inflexible and overly proscriptive view of pesticide use, promoting blunt approaches aimed simply at reducing or prohibiting pesticide use, rather than focusing on the more important goal of reducing risk, while failing to appreciate the crucial role pesticides play in modern, sustainable farming.

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Pesticides have a vital role to play in meeting the challenge of producing enough food to feed a growing global population, while protecting the environment on which agriculture relies. Conventional agriculture involving efficient use of inputs optimizes both the productivity of cultivated land and the availability of non-cultivated land for other purposes. This includes land used for conservation and wildlife benefits, such as un-cropped headlands and field corners, often managed under current agri-environment schemes within Pillar 2 of the CAP. Lower-yield agriculture, for instance under organic systems, would inevitably increase pressure to bring currently un-cropped land into production if yield levels are to be maintained or increased, with clear consequences for wildlife and the environment.

Furthermore, direct application of pesticides on land set aside for conservation can help ensure that land is properly managed to provide maximum benefit. Some of the best examples of sustainable farming in the UK take a conventional approach, both to growing crops and to managing land for biodiversity and the environment. This approach often sees environmental measures considered a crop like any other – managed with the same time, effort and expense, and under the same agronomic principles as the rest of the farm. This may, for example, mean headlands cultivated to produce a strip of pollen-rich flowers are treated with herbicides to manage weeds, so producing a habitat more attractive to pollinators and other beneficial invertebrates. Not only does this have a widespread positive impact on wildlife, but the presence of beneficials on field margins provides additional pest control in neighbouring crops, reducing the need to apply insecticides later in the year.

It is clear, through practices such as this, that pesticides are part of the solution and not the problem with regard to sustainable production. Prohibiting farmers from using them not only sends a misleading message to farmers, undermining appreciation of the positive role responsible pesticide use can play in integrated farm management, but also prevents farmers from accessing an important tool to help them farm for the benefit of biodiversity and the environment.

Whether as part of the CAP reform process or through any other legislative or regulatory approach, we believe that farmers must be allowed access to substances that have successfully met the stringent EU evaluation procedure and which allow them to effectively control insect, disease and weed pressures throughout the year.

Pesticides are among the most heavily regulated products in Europe, and it currently takes around a decade, costing nearly $273 million (€200m), to bring an active ingredient to market. A large proportion of this time and cost is dedicated to research required under the regulatory system to achieve registration. This regulatory process, involving rigorous scrutiny by independent scientific experts, ensures plant protection products are safe for consumers, for the people who use them and the environment.

However, despite this, European policy-makers seem intent on imposing unnecessary further restrictions on farmers’ access to the technology they need to meet increases in demand for food. Last year’s moratorium on three neonicotinoid insecticides, and the Commission’s intentions on pesticide use in EFAs, demonstrate an over-simplistic and poorly informed approach to the way pesticides are used by European farmers and the very low risks they actually pose.

The commercial response to this challenging European policy environment has been clear: the number of new active ingredients being developed and introduced in the EU is decreasing despite an increase in global expenditure on agricultural R&D. According to a study by agribusiness consultants Phillips McDougall, the share of global R&D investment spent on developing new crop protection products for the European market has fallen sharply from 33% in the 1980s to just 16% today. This is particularly worrying as Europe will have to play an ever-greater role in global food production in the coming decades, with climate change and population increases heaping pressure on the developing world in meeting its own nutritional needs. It seems perverse that European policy-makers are intent on curtailing the continent’s ability to produce its own food, apparently satisfied to rely on other parts of the globe to provide for us – at exactly the time they will increasingly struggle to provide for themselves.

We want to see the EU promoting a more progressive and science based regulatory environment, so that Europe’s farmers can benefit from new products and innovative technologies to help meet growing global demand for sustainable, affordable and healthy food supplies. The Crop Protection Industry can play a crucial role in supporting productive agriculture in Europe, which in turn is central to meeting global food security challenges. It’s vital that European policy-makers recognise our willingness to help and foster a political and regulatory environment that allows us to do so

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