Increase in methyl bromide use

Methyl bromide is an ozone depleting pesticide, and is subject to an international convention to phase out its use by 2005. Between 1994 and 1998 use of methyl bromide on strawberries increased by 27% in the UK.

A new report from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) has looked at pesticide usage during the 1997/98 growing season on soft fruit including strawberries, blackcurrant, raspberries and grapevines.
    The area of soft fruit grown in Britain has declined by 25% since the last survey in 1994. Overall the weight of pesticides applied has decreased by only 3% over the same period. 
    By volume applied, methyl bromide is the most frequently used pesticide in the soft fruit sector. In 1994 137,369 kg of methyl bromide was used, which increased to 173,976 kg by 1998. 
    Some 110 governments, including the UK, have agreed to the international Montreal Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Ozone Depleting Substances. It requires developed countries to phase out the use of methyl bromide by 2005, with interim reductions of 25% by 1999 and 50% by 2001 (agreed 1997). The fact that the UK has seen a 27% increase in this sector goes totally against the aim of the Protocol.
    PN contacted David Coggon, chair of the Advisory Committee on Pesticides, who said he has asked government officials for a paper on the mechanisms by which the UK will comply with the Protocol in relation to methyl bromide’s pesticidal uses.

Pesticide usage survey report 160: Soft fruit in Great Britain 1998, MAFF, £3.50, 62pp. www.csl.goc.uk/environment/level3/pusg.htm

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No.51, March 2001, p23]