New site supports French NAP, focuses on Integrated Pest Management

The French Ministry of Agriculture has launched a website dedicated to bringing together references and knowledge on Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in order to help educate farmers, advisers and trainers.

The website, EcophytoPIC, is designed to be a central reference point for all sources of information relating to Ecophyto, France’s National Action Plan (NAP) which has set the ambitious challenge of halving pesticide use nationally over the course of 10 years. You can read more about developments in France in ENDURE’s Country Profile.

The new site is a portal not only to crop protection methods, but also addresses concepts such as monitoring, decision support systems, training, innovation and research. Above all, it seeks to introduce the concept of the systems approach which needs to be developed for rethinking crop management.

The site also offers links to ENDURE tools such as the IPM Training Guide and ENDURE Information Centre. ENDURE is playing a role in the development of the site, which was created by a team led by ACTA’s Philippe Delval (pictured above right), with ENDURE coordinator Antoine Messéan, INRA, chairing the scientific and technical committee.

Besides the comprehensive French site, a number of other national online resources have been created to support farmers and advisers in the introduction of NAPs. Some are designed to offer information on pesticides in general, while others are designed as online supports for forecasting and issuing pest warnings.