Roots of reform – a call for sustainable farming

Pesticide Action Network UK welcomes many of the overall recommendations contained in a report from the Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food, including some elements of a progressive pesticide policy. The members of the Commission, who came from a wide range of backgrounds, believe their experience in producing an agreed report, shows that consensus can be reached on a way forward for farming and food. David Buffin reports. 

The recent foot and mouth crisis caused many people in the farming and food industry to think about what they do from first principles.
    The government set up the wide-ranging Policy Commission to examine how best to create a sustainable competitive and diverse farming and food sector for England, which advances environmental, economic, health and animal welfare goals. Its remit was required to be consistent with the government’s aims for Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform, enlargement of the EU and increased trade liberalization. 
    The Commission strongly believed that the farming and food industry is on a course that cannot be sustained in the long term. In responses to the Commission’s written consultation, hardly anyone had a good word to say about the situation as it stands. Taxpayers are spending £3 billion annually on agriculture support in the UK. Through price support provided by CAP, EU consumers are paying more for their food than the rest of the world. Yet farm incomes are on the floor. 
    The production subsidies paid to farmers under CAP have become part of the problem rather than the solution. The Commission concludes that the UK government needs to go into negotiations on the next round of CAP reform with the objective of reducing direct production payments in favour of increasing and broadening support for sustainable rural development. In particular the Commission wants to see the European Union’s budget for environmental programmes in the countryside substantially increased, helping to encourage best practice and pay for environmental benefits which the market will not provide. In these endeavors, the government is advised to prepare its position carefully and build its alliances across Europe to make sure reform finally happens.
    The report laments the fact that the rural environment has been damaged by years of intensive agricultural production. Some farmers are now trying to redress this by better environmental practices, encouraging biodiversity and planting trees and hedges. But many farmers cannot afford to spend their scarce resources on improving the situation. 
    By increasing production after World War II, farmers were responding to public policy signals that this was what the country wanted. 

Pesticides – a cause of pollution
The Commission recognizes that pesticide use has caused damage to the wider environment. Furthermore it acknowledges the public anxiety about the unknown harmful effects and consequences of combinations of pesticides (the so-called cocktail effect) (see page 10). But what it leaves out are the chronic effects on people’s health of long-term exposure to pesticides. PAN UK keeps a database of over 1,000 cases, and has recently collaborated in a major study on people who are so ill from exposure to organophosphates that they can no longer work.
    The Commission’s report acknowledges that the majority of our food will continue to be grown with the help of pesticides, at least for the foreseeable future. At the same time we must minimize actual and potential negative consequences arising from the use of pesticides wherever possible. To this end, there was support for the government’s strategy to reduce the risk from pesticide use, and for efforts to research and disseminate advice on systems and techniques such as Integrated Farm Management and organic farming. Training and advice to farmers will be critically important both to minimize usage and to ensure that the safest appropriate chemicals are used in a given situation. 
    Overall, the Commission is keen to see a greater involvement of the public within the regulatory and decision-making structures that govern the uses of technology as they relate to farming, food and the environment. It recommends that the Advisory Committee on Pesticides (ACP) [the body that advises government ministers about pesticide safety] should widen both its remit and representation to allow a broader, more inclusive and open approach to its important work. PAN UK welcomes the news that the public could be allowed increased access to the process of decision-making about pesticides. After continuous pressure over many years from PAN UK and other groups, the government’s ACP has opened its doors to more public scrutiny. 

PAN UK comment
In its submission to the Commission, PAN urged that particularly risky pesticides, such as endocrine-disrupting chemicals, carcinogens, and bioaccumulative substances, should be restricted by regulators, and that the precautionary principle should come into play when there is not enough safety information. PAN UK is disappointed that the Commission did not recognise the need to include the so-called ‘comparative risk assessment’ into the regulatory process whereby hazardous pesticides are replaced by safer alternatives. 
    The risks to people’s health and the environment will be reduced if the government adopts a progressive pesticide reduction strategy, as they have in Sweden, for example. It is disappointing that the report falls short of clear recommendations. 
    The report hedges around the issue of a pesticides tax. The Commission supports the possibility of a tax, but falls short of a full recommendation. PAN UK believes a pesticides tax should be imposed to help support conversion to more sustainable agriculture, such as organic farming. 
    PAN UK welcomes the increase in the research and development for integrated farming and organic farming, that reduce or avoid the use of pesticides. We hope that the resources ear-marked for research will be sufficient actually to deliver safer alternatives in practice.
    We welcome the suggestion for greater public involvement in the regulatory decision making process. The report however fails to recognise that government committees take account of the wide range of scientific views found across society.
    PAN UK welcomes the need to move away from the old ‘broad-spectrum’ chemistry, which produced pesticide active ingredients that are still in use today. However adopting newer, more selective, less persistent chemistry should also avoid other adverse effects and recognise the uncertainty that still exists in the regulatory approval system. Pesticides are largely considered safe by virtue of extrapolating findings from animal testing. Better pesticide safety testing is required as a matter of urgency.

Farming and Food – a sustainable future, Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food, Cabinet Office, January 2002, www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/farming.

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 55, March 2002, page 18]