The Farm to Fork vision sets out a huge challenge to the tillage sector on this island. The prospect of having to produce crops in this temperate and highly unpredictable climate with half the tools that we have honed to production systems in recent decades, appears daunting.

The promise to free up the registration of biopesticides is hardly a joyous mystery when the same process to date has not really delivered tools that are effective in a field situation.

The proposal refers to a desire not to hamper farmers’ incomes while targeting a reduction in pesticide use. The objective being to reduce the major risks linked to pesticide use as measured by its harmonised risk indicator.

While it is difficult to argue with this as an overall objective, any attempt to remove these important tools in the absence of proven plant protection alternatives would inevitably result in substantial yield loss from weeds, pests and diseases.

The use of stubble cultivation, stale seedbeds, catch cropping and rotation will impact on weed pressures

Of course, we can do more to reduce pesticide use, but this cannot be an instant substitution of one practice over another because alternatives do not exist currently. Realistically, we do not have alternative options, but these would take some years to develop.

The use of stubble cultivation, stale seedbeds, catch cropping and rotation will impact on weed pressures, but may still not remove the need for herbicides. Some of these practices may reduce pressure from certain pests but increase others.

What is definitely lacking from the strategy document is a commitment to find alternatives to pesticides before a reduction is imposed.

There can be little doubt but that the best way to bring about change at farm level is to offer options that are more profitable than current practice

Even if we had real alternatives, it seems possible that the technologies involved, for example genetic and gene-editing solutions, would cost as much or more than current practice.

There can be little doubt but that the best way to bring about change at farm level is to offer options that are more profitable than current practice rather than ones that may cost more, either as direct costs or yield penalty or both.

One of the great contradictions in the strategy is the desire to ensure that everyone has access to sufficient, nutritious, sustainable food that upholds high standards of safety and quality to meet dietary needs and food preferences while preserving the affordability of food.

The stated aim is to make the most sustainable food also the most affordable, but it can only do this for farmers if prices are at a higher level than what is available from the markets today.

Tackling double standards

Acknowledging that the sustainability of food systems is a global issue, it suggests that all food systems will have to adapt to face diverse challenges. This may be a pious aspiration.

While acknowledging that the necessary transition will be supported by technical and financial assistance from instruments such as the cohesion funds and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development, there is little to suggest that higher internal standards will be adequately protected from much cheaper imports produced using very different regimes.

It remains to be seen if products and practices that are clearly stated as unacceptable for EU producers

We see this in the crop sector where internal producers are forced to deliver extremely high standards of management, traceability and stewardship, while products imported into the EU are awarded the same acknowledgement by virtue of some trade agreement.

It remains to be seen if products and practices that are clearly stated as unacceptable for EU producers, such as a huge range of pesticides and the use of GM crops, might be treated differently in this new strategy.

Perhaps our EU masters should address this issue

The bottom line here is that cheapest-origin maize, which is effectively being dumped to find a home for a product that has to be sold below cost to find a market, continues to be given unquestioned access and is being used to support Irish assurance schemes that have long paid scant regard to the credentials of native and EU alternatives.

Perhaps our EU masters should address this issue, via sustainability or other means, ahead of introducing its new strategy to give farmers and consumers reason to believe that it is serious about sustainability.

In short

  • The EU proposals to cut pesticide use by up to 50% will seriously hit producers here unless it is introduced in tandem with viable alternatives.
  • It will take some persuading to convince EU farmers that these new strategies will deliver for farmers, but that is very much the job of farming representatives to ensure.
  • Tackling the current double standards with regard to imports from outside of the EU would be a good way to show solidarity to the sustainability cause.