Germany - a buoyant market

Some of the world's biggest multinational pesticide manufacturers are based in Germany. They supply the largest market in Europe where sales remain buoyant. Carina Weber and Ulf Jacob report.

Figure 1.  Tonnes of active ingredients sold in Germany

Pesticide market 1997
"The German pest control industry can look back over a positive development in their business" according to the 1997-1998 yearly report of the industry confederation Agrar (IVA). IVA member companies have raised their net sales within Germany of their home-based products to DM1.907 billion (US$1 billion), a rise of 6.8%. Export figures have also risen by 15.25% to DM 4.036 billion. 
    Recent sales of pesticides in Germany do not reveal a significant trend towards a reduction in pesticide use. Use of insecticides actually increased by 4% to 911 tonnes during 1997. The IVA attribute this to the increased acreage of rapeseed which requires greater applications of insecticide. Herbicide application, the prime indicator of how much land is set aside or being brought back into use, rose by 2% to 15,369 tonnes. Other chemicals show a fall of 4% to 3,256 tonnes.

Reduction measures
The Federal Ministry of Agriculture has not adopted specific programmes whose sole aim is to reduce the quantity of pesticides used. In comparison with the rest of Europe, Germany has a highly developed system of regulations to control the registration and use of pesticides. Germany is, for example, one of the few European countries to insist on proof of competence for professional users of agricultural pesticides and on regular inspection of spraying equipment. German pesticide policy is designed  to give priority to the interests of both the consumer and the environment by ensuring that pesticides are used by experts in accordance with the makers' directions, good professional practice and the principles of integrated pest management (IPM).  
    The Plant Protection Act of 1986, is defined as a combination of strategies to give priority to biology, biotechnology, plant breeding and cultivation systems in order to reduce the use of chemical pesticides to an acceptable minimum.

Poor take-up of IPM
According to World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Germany, only a small proportion of farmers actually adopt the principles of IPM. Little attention is paid to pest density, economic threshold levels or post-emergence application. A recent survey among 644 farmers in the Federal state of North-Rhine Westphalia revealed that 25% of farmers claimed their methods followed the principles of integrated crop management, including integrated crop protection. However, only 8% of the farmers actually used integrated farming methods, even when fairly low requirements were set. Over 90% of the farmers preferred chemical weed control. The study concludes that in cereal production, mechanical weed control, early warning services, the use of computerised decision models and adjusted crop rotation are the exception rather than the rule in general farming practice.

    The widespread use of the illegally imported herbicide atrazine together with the findings of the survey of pesticide use in the Federal Republic point to significant flaws in the implementation of the pesticide regulations. The level of supervision of legal requirements in the Federal States is totally inadequate, says WWF Germany. It does not make sense for the advisory and supervisory services to be carried out simultaneously by the same pest control body. 
    A tax on pesticides and subsidies for discontinuing their use would be more effective in persuading farmers to limit applications to the minimum, according to WWF Germany.

Residues
There are three major sets of consumer protection regulations-the Drinking Water Order (Trinkwasser-Verordnung), the Maximum Residue Limits Order (Rueckstands-hoechstmengenverordnung) and the Foodstuffs Act (Lebensmittel und Bedarfsgegen-staendegesetz). The approach in all regulations is the same, that is allowable limits are set for the amount of contamination by residual pesticides.
    To reduce the risks associated with pesticide use government action is predominantly focused on monitoring the Plant Protection Act and the regulations of the individual State governments. Food and drinking water standards are controlled by institutes of the Federal State, individual state governments, water works and by private food markets.
    A nation-wide representative food monitoring programme was conducted from 1988 to 1993 in the old Federal States (and from 1991-1995 in the new States) but has been discontinued.
    According to a recent survey by WWF on the contamination of rivers by pesticides, surface water contains measured concentrations well above the recommended guidelines. In present conditions it is essential to take into account the regular damage to biodiversity in river water. In groundwater throughout the Republic barely 30% of measurements showed contamination. A survey of 600 waterworks revealed that almost half the sources of drinking water are already contaminated with pesticides.

Genetically modified organisms
German legislation on labelling of GM-free food comes into force on 15 October, according to the journal Agrow. Companies will be required to label their products as produced without gene technology.

Information supplied by Carina Weber of the Pesticides Action Network, Germany and Ulf Jacob of WWF Germany.

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 41, September 1998, page 21]