Time to put new tools into the farmer’s toolbox

Although my grandfather wasn’t a farmer, he was someone who worked with his hands his whole life, as well as someone who used tools for his job. One of my most treasured possessions is his battered toolbox with its set of trusted old tools, many of which are still in perfect condition and which I still use today. 

Olivier de Matos is the Director General of CropLife Europe. 

I sometimes imagine what he’d say if he were still around, seeing the shiny new tools and technologies now available that could have made his life’s work so much easier and more efficient. I also imagine what he’d say about farming today, in particular about how so many of the shiny new tools that have been developed for farmers are either way out of their price range, or that have been stuck for years in the EU’s regulatory pipeline. 

Given the challenges that EU agriculture is facing to transform the industry in record time, I am sure my grandfather would have had a ‘salty’ opinion about farmers not being able to access the tools available that would help them get the job done.

I firmly believe that innovation holds many of the answers to how we can address the challenges we face. Let me give three examples.

A digital future

First, the deliverables of Digital and Precision Agriculture (DPA) are still significantly under-appreciated in the current Commission proposal, as well as in the draft from the European Parliament.

Agricultural innovation will be fundamental to delivering the European Union’s flagship Green Deal. Our industry has committed €10bn to drive innovation in precision and digital technologies by 2030. We are already seeing how new technologies like digital farming are shrinking agriculture’s ecological footprint. High-tech precision applications enable the delivery of the minimum amount of crop protection, in precisely the right place at exactly the right time. The latest harmonised risk indicator shows a trend of pesticide reduction use and risk of 21%. This proves that we are on the right track.  

We are making these enormous investments because we believe in the future of agriculture. Moreover, by embracing the latest agricultural innovations and solutions, it will be possible to produce food for everyone – in Europe and further afield – in a more sustainable, less impactful way.

The proposed Sustainable Use of Pesticides Regulation (SUR) is key to enabling farmers to embrace these new and innovative tools. But it must be appropriately financed. European farmers and member states alone can’t be expected to shoulder all the administrative and financial burdens resulting from the costs of implementing the proposed SUR. 

Working with nature

Second, as part of our 2030 Commitments, CropLife Europe member companies are also investing €4bn into innovation in biopesticides. But financial investment alone is not enough. Farmers also need an enabling regulatory environment, as well as incentives, to ensure these innovative new crop protection solutions can be fully developed and deployed across the EU.

Biopesticides have many potential advantages. They are often less toxic to non-target organisms and the environment. They can also target specific pests, weeds or diseases, reducing the need for broad-spectrum chemical pesticides. And they break down more quickly in the environment, reducing the potential for long-term residues.

When used as a component of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programmes, applying biopesticides helps to deliver economically viable crop yields while reducing the overall use of chemical pesticides. Farmers can unlock the power of these innovative new products by incorporating them into their pest management strategies, using a combination of different biopesticides to target specific pests, applying them at the appropriate time and in the correct manner, and monitoring the results to ensure their effectiveness.

Before they can do so, however, the crop protection sector needs the EU institutions to ensure the regulatory framework helps our industry to bring new biopesticides into the European marketplace. The European Commission urgently needs to develop data requirements for novel biopesticides. Exciting new technologies such as peptides and fermentation products are being developed, but because of the lack of a clear regulatory pathway, these new innovations are not reaching the EU market. Applicants are uncertain about how to secure registration in Europe and EU farmers suffer as a result because they are at a competitive disadvantage compared to other global regions.

Innovation in plants

Third, the EU’s current regulatory framework for New Genomic Techniques (NGT) products is not fit for purpose. The existing rules are hindering the development and availability of NGT products for European farmers, and they are also negatively impacting EU innovation and competitiveness. Other regions of the world are forging ahead; Europe is lagging behind.

Plant breeding is as old as agriculture itself and farmers and scientists have long used many different plant breeding techniques to make use of a plant’s natural genetic diversity to produce plants with beneficial characteristics. Today’s innovation in plant breeding and plant biotechnology allows us to pinpoint specific changes in a plant and efficiently develop new varieties with targeted desirable characteristics, such as increased productivity, resistance to disease, drought tolerance, longer shelf life and improved taste.  

In July, the European Commission is expected propose a new legal framework for plants obtained by targeted mutagenesis and cisgenesis and for their food and feed products. This new framework must be non-discriminatory and apply the same regulatory oversight to similar plants, taking as the basis the regulatory system for conventionally-bred plants; it should be based on a plant’s characteristics, rather than the technique used to generate it; and it must be based on science, as well as future-proof to accommodate continuous scientific progress.

Farmers need to be able to choose between different plant breeding techniques, whether conventional, organic, or NGT. With this new choice of plant breeding methods, they can achieve the desired results much quicker and with greater precision.

These are both challenging and exciting times for European agriculture. To meet food production needs in 2050, while transforming to a sustainable agriculture system, Europe’s farmers must have the widest possible range of crop protection solutions, including both traditional and new tools.

So as my grandfather would almost certainly have said: “Come on, everyone. It’s time to get these new farming tools into the fields, so we can achieve Europe’s sustainable ambitions much sooner.”