By senior arable reporter Andrew Blake:
After everything that has been achieved via the Voluntary Initiative, the latest Brussels proposals to tighten pesticide use are particularly unwelcome.
It’s hard to dismiss the suspicion that they have been drawn up by people with only limited understanding of the vital role that pesticides play in most modern farming systems – or worse, that organic methods are the only acceptable way forward.
The VI, initially begrudged by many but increasingly accepted by all but a minority of conventional farmers and organic advocates, has done much to show that the risks from today’s agchem products used professionally and responsibly are minimal.
No system is risk-free. But the VI, with its three-pronged operator training/register, sprayer testing and crop protection management plan approach, has encouraged a professionalism that has long surpassed its initial underlying aim, namely to stave off a tax on pesticides.
So it is particularly galling to see the proposal that the National Action Plan, intended to make swingeing cuts in pesticide use, be paid for by an industry levy or tax.
Those who wish to introduce such draconian measures must provide undeniable, independently assessed, scientific evidence to support their case.
Failure to do so will merely reinforce the view that they are adopting the politically easy but scientifically naïve option of playing along for “green” votes.