Pesticides row highlights "green farming" split

A row is brewing between the UK and the EU over controversial new pesticide legislation that threatens to highlight a schism in environmental opinion on what exactly constitutes sustainable agriculture.

The European Parliament this week voted by a huge majority to introduce tighter rules governing the use of pesticides and ban 22 treatments, many of which are widely used by British farmers.

The UK government is opposed to the legislation, which the National Farmers Union (NFU) says will lead to falling productivity and could even wipe out harvests of winter vegetables such as carrots and parsnips.

The Green Party celebrated the vote, arguing that it would limit spraying of crops near schools and hospitals and ban 22 chemicals that are believed to be carcinogenic.

However, the NFU said that health benefits said to result from the ban are unproven and argued that there was in fact a strong green argument for the continued use of the 22 pesticides.

Speaking to BusinessGreen.com, Paul Charles, plant health advisor to the NFU, said that with world food demand continuing to rise rapidly measures that threaten to reduce yields would only increase pressure on agricultural land, indirectly contributing to unsustainable farming techniques and deforestation.

"You have to ask where is the available land?" he said. "If yields drop by 10, 20, 30 per cent [as a result of these bans], which is entirely possible, there is no available agricultural land anywhere in the world to make up that shortfall, particularly when we also face huge population growth and changing food demand from Asia. We need to deliver a huge increase in food production over the coming decades and the only way to do that is through improved productivity."

The Soil Association, the charity which manages the certification of products as organic, labelled as " nonsense" the suggestion that banning pesticides would result in falling yields, citing recent research from Reading University which suggested that yields could actually improve under organic production techniques.

But Charles dismissed the accusation that the NFU was guilty of scaremongering, insisting there was a genuine chance some crops could be virtually wiped out if the ban is enforced.

"Government figures from the pesticide safety directorate show that yields will be affected [if the new rules are imposed]," he said. "It will vary hugely from crop to crop, but the biggest impact will be on horticultural crops like parsnips and carrots. The market for wheat, for example, is so big pesticide companies will have an incentive to invest in alternative products, but the market for many horticultural crops is too small to justify that investment."

A spokesman for Defra refused to be drawn on whether the continued use of the pesticides represented a greener alternative to banning them, but said that the government was still opposed to the legislation. "We do not feel [the continued use of the pesticides] is anti-sustainable," he said. "We have been very clear that environmental protection is just as important as food production."

If passed by the European Council, the new rules will be phased in from next year before coming into full effect from 2013.

The Defra spokesman said that it was "99.9 per cent certain" that the European Council would pass the new rules, but he said that the UK government would be pushing for various exemptions, known as derogations, for some pesticides. "We could see special permission granted to not carry out the legislation, where some of the chemicals where there are no viable alternatives could be exempted from the ban for about five years," he said.

In related news the government this week stepped up its efforts to promote green farming techniques, announcing plans for a new national research centre for food and the environment designed to better integrate Defra's food, farming and environmental research programmes, and publishing a new Green Farming Guide.

The Code of Good Agricultural Practice brings together three previous green farming codes, making it easier for farmers to understand and follow sustainable practices.

"This new code will make it simpler and easier for them to interpret legislation and will help them take effective steps to avoid pollution," said farming minister Jane Kennedy. "The code is appropriate for all farming systems, including organic farming, and is designed to help farmers, growers and other land managers make the most appropriate choices for their individual situations. "