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European experts gather to debate pesticide proposals
Oct. 8, 2008
John Peck, Northern Europe technical director for BASF, said the industry faced ‘one hell of a challenge’ to boost production to meet growing demand for food, but the EU’s legislation threatened to undermine farmers' efforts.
He said: “If you look at what we have achieved over the last 60 years, we have managed to treble the yield of wheat and not only that, we have also improved on quality.
“That has been achieved through a number of factors – better varieties, better understanding of nutrient requirements of the crop and also through the development of better, more targeted crop protection materials.
“As an industry we do not want less regulation, but what we do want is regulation to move forward to reflect current scientific knowledge; we want better regulation not less regulation.”
He was joined by chairman of the Crop Protection Association, Dominic Dyer who said more support from other European countries was needed at an EU level.
He said: “In the UK we have reached a point where there is a clear signal there is a problem emerging so I think it has been accepted and the connections have been made in the food chain on that point.
“In other countries it’s a lot more difficult, partly because they don’t have an independent regulator like the Pesticides Safety Directorate producing reports that are being channelled through Government and the food chain.
“We have seen national debates in France and President Sarkozy is very much behind a significant reduction in pesticide use, so farmers in France are saying they will have to live with that anyway so the European legislation is catching up and they are not going to put up a fight.”
Mr Peck called for a more ‘rational debate’ urging all parties to come to the negotiating table and discuss the proposals before any final decisions are made.
He said: “We have a very polarised debate and at the moment we seem to be standing on two sides of the fence throwing stones at each other.
“If we are to produce a sustainable solution moving forward what we need to do is pull down those barriers, stop throwing stones and actually sit down and talk to each other, listen and accept that we all have valid views and I believe in that way we will achieve a sustainable solution.”
Source: Farmers Guardian
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