IFOAM Organics Europe has begun a campaign to raise awareness of the environmental and economic impacts of synthetic pesticide use in the EU agri-food sector.

The organization is renewing calls for reducing pesticide use overall, with a view to eliminating them in the years ahead. IFOAM wants pesticide reduction to be a crucial target for the agriculture and food industries, but seeks more government support to make this happen.

Speaking to Food Ingredients First, IFOAM Europe deputy director Eric Gall discusses the need to phase out harmful pesticides from the food production system and provide farmers with alternatives. He wants these issues to remain high on the political agenda.

The EU already has important policy tools and budgets to accompany and support farmers to phase out toxic synthetic pesticides, and alternatives to the use of synthetic inputs are already available for many crops.

Researchers and organic farmers have long developed agroecological agronomic practices and natural alternatives to synthetic pesticides. While organic agriculture already offers some solutions based on agroecological methods, he flags that investment in research and innovation should continue to provide all farmers with agronomic techniques to ensure sufficient production while reducing production costs and securing a decent income. 

“Many companies sell biocontrol solutions, which could be made available more easily and faster to farmers thanks to a dedicated legal framework.”

“In addition, several policy actions should be prioritized, including protecting our drinking water supplies. The use of synthetic pesticides should be banned at least as a first step in water catchment areas because drinking water supplies should be protected from pesticide contamination, and estimations of the costs of water depollution keep increasing. Farming in these areas would still be possible since biocontrol solutions, including natural substances allowed in the organic regulation, could still be allowed.” 

Measuring pesticide reduction

IFOAM says that the current Harmonized Risk Indicator I (HRI-1), adopted by member states in 2019, amounts to spreading misleading information about pesticide reduction trends and cannot be considered credible policy-making. 

“The core issues with HRI-1 stem from its volume-based approach and reliance on non-scientific risk factors, which discriminate against less harmful substances, such as natural substances allowed in organic agriculture, that need to be used in larger amounts,” notes Gall.

“This misrepresentation of pesticide usage trends can obscure the reality of pesticide impacts, particularly when less harmful substances are involved.”

“Another particularly problematic feature of the HRI-1 is that when a pesticide is banned, the historical data for its use is retrospectively assigned a risk factor of 64. This artificially inflates the perceived reduction in pesticide use, creating a false sense of progress. As a result, the data presents an exaggerated dro in pesticide use, which can mislead the public and policymakers about the effectiveness of efforts to reduce pesticide usage and risk,” he explains. 

To address this, indicators for pesticide reduction should be significantly improved by considering pesticide toxicity, including environmental toxicity, and accounting for the area treated. 

“Such improvements would ensure that the indicators reflect the actual environmental and health risks posed by pesticide use and provide a more accurate picture of progress toward pesticide reduction. IFOAM Organics Europe and environmental NGOs and toxicologists have made detailed propositions for a more reliable European indicator.” 

The campaign 

Gall also flags the need for independent advisory systems because most farmers lack access to independent, high-expertise advisory services. 

“Instead, they rely on advice from private consultants affiliated with companies selling pesticides. Independent advisory systems, supported by public funding and geared toward agroecological solutions, are essential for helping farmers implement pesticide alternatives.”

“The Strategic Dialogue report rightly emphasizes that independent advisory services are crucial for accessing knowledge and innovation and calls for the widespread availability of dedicated training and independent advisory systems.”

The #StopHarm campaign attempts to visualize through infographics the varied impacts of widespread synthetic pesticide use, including their effect on farmers’ health and their families, on water resources, with massive costs of depollution, and biodiversity. 

IFOAM Europe will post visuals on social media in the weeks ahead to highlight these aspects. 

The impact of pesticides 

Farmers and their families are the first victims of pesticides, with increased risks of suffering from blood cancer, prostate cancer, and non-Hogkidian lymphomes, which are now recognized as occupational diseases in several member states. 

“Inhabitants of areas surrounding fields treated with synthetic pesticides are particularly exposed as well, especially children and pregnant women,” continues Gall. 

“Pesticides also leave residues that contaminate water, with massive consequences and costs of depollution. Such residues of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAs, known as ‘eternal pollutants,’ have been found all over Europe, with very high concentrations in drinking water. PFA comes from the degradation of multiple eternal pollutants used by many industrial sectors, but it is also a metabolite of several pesticides such as flufenacet or fluopyram, spread annually by tens of tons in agricultural areas.”

Gall reports that synthetic pesticides also play a major role in the collapse of biodiversity, including impacting insect and bird population declines. 

“In 2020, both the Farm to Fork and the EU Biodiversity strategies rightfully highlighted the reduction in the use and risk of chemical pesticides by 50% as a central policy objective to make our food system sustainable. More recently, the recommendations of the Strategic Dialogue on the future of agriculture also highlighted the need to reduce pesticides and to provide farmers with alternatives.”

“The narrow rejection of the proposed sustainable use of pesticides regulation (SUR) in the European Parliament should not be a reason for the European Commission to turn its back to science and to disregard one of the main causes of health and environmental damage on European soil and at the global level,” he concludes.