Chemical crop protection is regularly criticised - both in Germany and worldwide. Various associations and NGOs have been condemning its use in agriculture for decades and calling for a ‘reduction in pesticides’, in some cases even for the abandonment of synthetic chemical substances.
Such sweeping demands have been and continue to be rejected by the agricultural sector with reference to pressing economic requirements, problems with quarantine pests, the implementation of resistance strategies, etc. For a long time, a ‘front’ formed between environmental protection and agriculture. ‘It's almost a miracle that it was possible to break down this front’.
An initiative of the Ministry of Agriculture
This optimism led to the first annual report of the ‘Plant Protection Reduction Programme’ around 20 years ago. The initially national initiative of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture (led by a CSU minister at the time, by the way) became part of a European framework a few years later and resulted (as in all EU countries) in a National Action Plan. Since then, terms such as the ‘necessary level’ or ‘integrated pest management’ have been binding requirements.
However, sales of plant protection products in Germany have not shown a clear downward trend over the years. Excluding stored product protection gases, it was between around 25,000 and 35,000 tonnes per year between 1994 and 2023. Nor have all efforts been in vain: there has been massive progress in terms of variety resistance, forecasting and technology, but apparently without results across the board. Even more so, wide crop rotations and alternative cultivation systems are not the rule. This is because the use of PPPs does not follow abstract reduction targets, but (among other things) the weather, farm management and organisation, the markets and the individual risk perception of practitioners. Any policy aimed at voluntary change must align its instruments accordingly. They should also be effective and efficient in terms of target achievement.
What is efficient crop protection?
However, there is a huge lack of both the instruments and their efficiency. We know the sales figures, but we don't know how much of it actually reaches the fields and grassland. The EU's new statistical regulation (SAIO) will require actual use to be recorded from 2026 at the earliest - if that (bureaucracy!) becomes a reality at all. However, the quantity is only an auxiliary parameter.
What is relevant is the risk. There are different indicators for this. But even if the Harmonised Risk Indicator (HRI) (technically unsuitable, but politically desirable and practical in administration) is replaced by a better one that includes, for example, behaviour in the environment, ecotoxicity and human health, it still addresses areas that are actually (supposed to be) covered by the authorisation. To put it bluntly: why do we actually need reduction if we have an authorisation where the risks are constantly being reassessed (as is currently the case with flufenacet)? The constantly decreasing availability of active ingredients is much more important for effective crop protection than the pure quantity.
Understanding the biological connections
Not knowing does not justify doing nothing. But it does raise the question of shortcuts and proportionality. Reducing plant protection without structural elements as refuges for species is unlikely to be very successful. Likewise, ‘full-on plant protection’ with a few flowering strips at the edge of the forest that do not disturb anyone but are of little use. One is convenient for politicians, the other for farmers - because it costs little in each case.
In any case, reductions are not an end in themselves. The fact check explicitly recognises that dispensing with PPPs can lead to losses in yield and quality, higher CO2 emissions, more weed pressure and the necessary reorganisation of work processes. It also states: "The success (of avoiding pesticides) from an ecological point of view is currently rather difficult to determine. This could be done, for example, via certain arable weeds". Certainly, herbicide application not only eliminates weeds, but also food for insects, which in turn are food for birds. However, it is usually not possible to prove how such ‘cascade effects’ work in individual cases.
Fact check: Diverse environmental factors
The debate on quantity usually centres on the impact of crop protection on biodiversity. The new “fact check” from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research states that “the loss of habitats and the intensive use of cultivated landscapes have the strongest negative effect on biodiversity”. In other words, land consolidation, but also settlement and transport development. And also chemical plant protection. At best, their authorisation covers the direct effects on biodiversity, but not the indirect ones. And these are difficult to trace in individual cases: When it comes to climate protection, every tonne of CO2 counts globally. It can be measured and attributed to polluters. However, biodiversity is intended to safeguard the living environment, e.g. with regard to pollination, soil functions or freshwater cycles. It takes place locally and its effects are difficult to measure. The fact check shows ‘how far we still are from quantifying the relevant facets of biodiversity and tracking its development’. This applies not only to the ‘colourful flowers’, but even more so to soil biodiversity.
Keeping an eye on biodiversity
Hoeing is not a solution, because then the weeds are also gone. With the weed counting frame, a need for control could already be determined “manually” 40 years ago, but who had the time back then, who has the time today? Spot spraying is only an option if the algorithm determines the need for control. Because where there is a weed, it will be controlled.
If you really want to promote biodiversity, it's best not to try to do it “in the blue”. First of all, you need information:
- Which species are most endangered in a region, which “tasks” are suffering as a result?
- What is the reason for their endangerment, how can habitats for these species be restored?
- What do insects, birds and earthworms need?
And then we like to specifically discuss flower strips and fallow land, ploughless cultivation and everything that falls under “regenerative”. In addition, there is precise technology and the application of plant protection products adapted to the weather so that they are not blown into protected areas. In some cases, there are abstruse demands from the environmental corner regarding distance requirements. Only in third place do we see the reduction of quantities on the land.
Nature is not a laboratory
Many things are interconnected. But if no one can tell us why drastic measures are necessary at a specific location, but the justification is lost in talk about the “threat to our livelihoods”, this does not serve acceptance.
With the climate (to emphasise this just to be on the safe side), the situation is completely different: we know the scientific correlations and see the threat to the foundations of life not just in the abstract, but directly.
Conclusion
„There is nothing good unless you do it“ (Erich Kästner).
Unfortunately, we too often act as if we do. Percentage reduction targets for crop protection only lead to false expectations and then disappointment. As with organic farming, it is already foreseeable that the targets will not (or cannot) be achieved because key influencing factors (from the market to individual risk perception) are simply not taken into account. Not least, however, because farmers clearly feel that symbolic policy is being pursued at their expense.