Europe Reconsiders Pesticide Ban as Global Food Crisis Looms

Agriculture min­is­ters have warned that sig­nif­i­cantly reduc­ing pes­ti­cide use in the European Union could affect crop yields dur­ing a highly uncer­tain time.

An ambi­tious goal pro­posed by the European Commission to cut pes­ti­cide use in half by 2030 has been crit­i­cized by mem­ber states at the Agriculture and Fisheries Council (Agrifish), which recently took place in Brussels.

At the meet­ing, min­is­ters empha­sized ​“the need for viable sus­tain­able alter­na­tives to chem­i­cal pes­ti­cides before set­ting oblig­a­tory reduc­tion tar­gets.”

They added that the new reg­u­la­tions should also con­sider ​“the dif­fer­ences in geog­ra­phy, cli­mate and start­ing points in dif­fer­ent mem­ber states” before impos­ing restric­tions.

They fur­ther stressed that ​“sus­tain­abil­ity should not be sought at the expense of food secu­rity or of the com­pet­i­tive­ness of E.U. agri­cul­ture, espe­cially in the cur­rent con­text of the Russian aggres­sion against Ukraine.”

The emerg­ing divi­sions among the 27 agri­cul­tural min­is­ters will likely have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on new reg­u­la­tion being worked on by the European Commission. The goal of the reg­u­la­tion is to reduce the use of chem­i­cals in agri­cul­ture.

The pro­posed reg­u­la­tion asks gov­ern­ments to set national reduc­tion tar­gets and enforce envi­ron­men­tally friendly pest con­trol through inte­grated pest man­age­ment prac­tices with pes­ti­cides used as a mea­sure of last resort.

The rules also stip­u­late a com­plete ban of pes­ti­cide use in parks, play­grounds, schools and eco­log­i­cally-sen­si­tive areas.

Finally, the pro­posed rules allow gov­ern­ments to use funds from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to cover farm­ers’ costs as they tran­si­tion to other forms of pest con­trol.

The strongest oppo­si­tion to the pro­posed reg­u­la­tions came from Spain, Portugal, Malta, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria and Hungary.

Spain’s agri­cul­ture min­is­ter warned that pro­hibit­ing pes­ti­cides in eco­log­i­cally-sen­si­tive areas could allow them to become breed­ing grounds for pests. Slovenia’s min­is­ter added that farm­ers in these areas would have a sig­nif­i­cant dis­ad­van­tage due to the pro­hi­bi­tions.

However, Stella Kyriakides, the European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, defended the pro­posal and said long-term food secu­rity and resilience require a change of course regard­ing the use of pes­ti­cides.

“We are not ban­ning pes­ti­cide use,” she said. ​“The range of bio­log­i­cal and low-risk alter­na­tives is pro­gres­sively increas­ing on the mar­ket, with more approvals and more stream­lined rules, to help the farm­ers’ tran­si­tion.”

“Continued use of research, inno­va­tion and new tech­nolo­gies will sup­port the tran­si­tion, too,” she added. ​“Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine means we must adapt to new real­i­ties. But we can­not let that dis­rupt our sus­tain­abil­ity drive.”

Further slash­ing pes­ti­cide use will also affect olive grow­ers, many of whom opposed the October 2021 ban on the use of dimethoate.

The chem­i­cal is widely con­sid­ered to be the only effi­cient line of defense against the olive fruit fly in olive groves. Some farm­ers had lamented that the ban was imple­mented in the absence of viable alter­na­tive insect-con­trol strate­gies.

“Over the years, syn­thetic active sub­stances have nur­tured an approach to plant pro­tec­tion more focused on the treat­ment of pathol­ogy and less on pre­ven­tion, due to the avail­abil­ity on the mar­ket of pes­ti­cides such as dimethoate,” Gennaro Sicolo, the pres­i­dent of Italia Olivicola, a pro­ducer asso­ci­a­tion, told Olive Oil Times.

“Controlling a dis­ease with­out syn­thetic mol­e­cules might be chal­leng­ing, but it is nec­es­sary,” he added. ​“The whole pro­duc­tion process must take place while con­sid­er­ing the pro­tec­tion of the envi­ron­ment and its nat­ural resources.”

Sicolo argues that olive grow­ers should take a more pre­ven­tive approach to the spread of pests.

“That can trig­ger a vir­tu­ous cir­cle where the well­be­ing of the plant is at its cen­ter, in har­mony with the soil and the whole envi­ron­ment that it inhab­its,” he said. ​“We need to rebuild our [pest] con­trol strate­gies.”

The 2021 annual report from the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) con­firmed that pes­ti­cide use in olive pro­duc­tion is quite low in Europe.

The major­ity of sam­ples – 96 per­cent of 100,000 – ana­lyzed by EFSA showed the pres­ence of chem­i­cals was well below the legal limit. Moreover, 57 per­cent of all sam­ples did not con­tain quan­tifi­able residue lev­els.

“An organic approach to farm­ing unfor­tu­nately does not only depend on olive farm­ers,” Sicolo said. ​“A broader approach may and has to come from other areas where syn­thetic prod­ucts are widely used. Olive farm­ing can do its part even in the face of ris­ing costs.”

According to the European Federation of Food, Agriculture, Tourism and Trade (EFFAT), the pro­posed reg­u­la­tion is a step for­ward but does not take into account spe­cific impacts of pes­ti­cide use, such as those on work­ers’ health.

“The pes­ti­cide peril in Europe is real,” said Kristjan Bragason, EFFAT’s gen­eral sec­re­tary. ​“Exposure to pes­ti­cides and agro­chem­i­cals con­sti­tutes one of the major risks faced by farm work­ers, although still largely under­es­ti­mated. Protecting work­ers’ health and safety means striv­ing for truly sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture.”

Natalija Svrtan, a cam­paigner for Pesticide-Free Agriculture, told Olive Oil Times that revers­ing 80 years’ worth of dam­age caused by pes­ti­cides to soil, bio­di­ver­sity and human health would be a lengthy process.

“We can­not fix the prob­lem overnight, by apply­ing one sim­ple solu­tion,” she said. ​“Substantial changes must be done to our food-pro­duc­ing sys­tems, and that needs to be done with­out any delay.”

“Biodiversity and healthy soils are the base input we need for the pro­duc­tion of any type of food, and agro-ecol­ogy is the solu­tion to pre­serv­ing it,” Svrtan added. ​“This is shown by stud­ies as well as by the ris­ing num­ber of organic pro­duc­ers, who suc­cess­fully apply inte­grated pest man­age­ment.”

According to Svrtan, inte­grated pest man­age­ment includes sev­eral tech­niques such as inter­crop­ping, sub-sow­ing, multi-crop­ping, crop rota­tion, leav­ing fields fal­low and con­stantly mon­i­tor­ing the appear­ance of pests.

“When pre­ven­tion meth­ods alone are not suf­fi­cient, pref­er­ence is given to non-chem­i­cal alter­na­tives, such as bio­log­i­cal con­trol of harm­ful insects, phys­i­cal trap­ping and mechan­i­cal weed­ing,” she said.

Svrtan added that pre­vi­ous farm­ing prac­tices must be replaced with new ones to restore nat­ural bal­ance to human-sculpted land­scapes.

“Many old olive trees were replaced with new cul­ti­vars that are prone to dis­eases and pest attacks,” she said. ​“Any inter­fer­ence in the nat­ural order, in nat­ural processes, will lead to cre­at­ing more prob­lems than it solves.”

“We need to be wise and live in har­mony with nature, instead of fight­ing it, like we are doing now, by using pes­ti­cides and min­eral fer­til­iz­ers,” Svrtan added. ​“Even with new cul­ti­vars, tech­niques like pest mon­i­tor­ing, pest traps, mechan­i­cal meth­ods of weed­ing and the use of repel­lents can at least decrease the use of pes­ti­cides and fer­til­iz­ers.”

The E.U. Agrifish Council ended with a doc­u­ment signed by 12 mem­ber states which asked the E.U. to pro­mote sus­tain­abil­ity and a new approach to pes­ti­cides at a global level.

Should such a global tran­si­tion to sus­tain­abil­ity fail, the doc­u­ment states, ​“the Green Deal deploy­ment and its strate­gies could pro­voke envi­ron­men­tal loss and a drop in European agri­cul­ture yields.”

The new rules on pes­ti­cides will have to be approved both by the European Council and the European Parliament to come into force.

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