Following the anniversary of the Farm to Fork Strategy on 20th May, today severalmembers of the Agri-Food Chain Roundtable on Plant Protection have released aco-signed open letter about the importance of a holistic assessment before makingany decisions about the reduction of pesticide use, including the target for 50%reduction of the use of chemicals as set in the Farm to Fork Strategy. In Europe, pesticide use and risk has decreased sharply over the past 50 years. Thanks to innovation in agriculture, the average use rate of active ingredients per hectare for herbicides forinstance, has dropped by 97%. Ultimately, over the past 60 years, the average use rates of newlyintroduced active ingredients have been reduced. Currently less than 470 active substances (including 29 low-risk active substances and 23 basic substances) are available in the market toprotect crop and plant production.Max Schulman, Member of the Finnish Farmers Organisation (MTK) in Copa and Cogeca andcurrent Chair of the Roundtable expressed that, “In the near future we see ways to do better 2| 2with less plant protection products using biocontrol technologies, crop rotation systems,digitalization methods or new Genomic Techniques. However, all options are not currentlyavailable on the ground and the political objective of the Farm to Fork in further reducing theuse of active substances is a challenge in all the main EU productions. There is a clear need tocarry out a comprehensive assessment of the cumulative economic, social and environmentalimpacts of the various targets for EU agriculture set out in the Farm to Fork and BiodiversityStrategies before taking any political or binding regulatory decisions.”The signatories call on the Commission for a realistic time frame to be considered before takingany legislative decision or change in the near future. Dialogue has never been so essential, as theagricultural value chain in the EU try to attain the ambitious Green Deal targets.
Read the joint letter here.
O artigo foi publicado originalmente em Copa Cogeca.