Danish success with Pesticide Action Plans

The first Danish Pesticide Action Plan of 1986 had a difficult start, but later Plans have had a dramatic impact, and demonstrated that pesticide usage can be greatly reduced without a substantial increase in expenses. Hans Nielsen reports.

In 1986, Denmark developed its first Pesticide Action Plan, the ambitious goal being to reduce pesticide usage by 50% before 1997, measured both tonnes of active substances and by treatment frequency(1). Furthermore, the Action Plan aimed at changing to less environmentally detrimental pesticides. The Plan did not include any effective means and was opposed by farmers, Danish manufacturers and importers of pesticides. The treatment frequency was as a consequence only reduced 8% by 1997, whereas the increased usage of low dose pesticides(2) resulted in a 47% reduction of tonnes of active substance.
    To halt the use of pesticides that were particularly hazardous for health or damaging to the environment, the government decided in 1987 that all pesticides had to be evaluated within five years. The Danish manufacturers and importers sabotaged the health and environmental evaluation of active substances and products by continually introducing new documentation about the pesticides (so the assessment could not be concluded), and by appealing the Environmental Protection Agency’s ban to the Environmental Appeal Board.

Only 78 of 213 approved
In 1994 the Chemicals Act was changed, and it became possible to ban import, sales and the use of pesticides This also stopped the sabotage of the evaluation process and it was completed in 1997, after a five-year delay. The result ended usage of 135 of the 213 evaluated pesticides, only 78 having been approved. As a consequence, all pesticides containing seven different active ingredients, many still in use in other EU-countries ceased to be used. Among others the actives included atrazine, dichlorprop, thiabendazol and diclobenil. 

Pesticide tax
In addition, in 1996, the government introduced a pesticide tax based on the price. The tax is 54% of the wholesale price for insecticides and 33% for herbicides and fungicides. 
    The revenue of the tax is now DKR 375 million per year, and 75% goes back to the farmers in lower land taxes, The rest goes to research into the effects of pesticides on the environment and health, an early warning system for pesticides in groundwater and to support conversion to organic farming. 
    The Danish Pesticide Action Plan costs about DKR65 million a year, and is not financed out of the pesticide tax.

The Bichel Committee
In 1997, motivated by a number of incidents of pesticides in groundwater, the Danish Parliament requested the government to appoint a committee with independent expertise to assess the overall consequences of phasing out the use of pesticides in the agricultural industry (the Bichel Committee). The committee recommends a three-pronged strategy for reducing pesticide usage. This would mean a general reduction of pesticide usage, a reduction of exposure of biotopes and increasing organic restructuring. The committee found that the use of pesticides in agriculture could be reduced from a treatment frequency index of 2.45 in 1997 to between 1.4 and 1.7 within a five to 10 year period without serious socioeconomic loss or financial loss for farmers. 

Pesticide Action Plan II
Based on the Bichel committee report, in 2000 the Danish government revealed a new Plan with the following goals:

• as low a treatment frequency index as possible on treated acreage
• protection of certain areas including a buffer zone along targeted watercourses and lakes over 100 m²
• an increase in the acreage of organic production
• revision of the pesticide approval scheme

Action to be taken includes:

• increased advice to farmers on reducing their pesticide consumption
• establishment of demonstration farms and information groups
• increased use of decision-support and warning systems for diseases and pests
• targeted information campaigns organised by agricultural organisations
• supplementary training of farmers and agricultural advisers
• introduction of targets for use of pesticides in different crops as a control instrument at farm level
• advice to farmers on reducing pesticide consumption, using relevant tools, such as targets, action plans and spraying logs.
• use of set-aside and environmentally-orientated farming measures schemes to establish buffer zones along watercourses and lakes
• research in organic food production within crop farming and livestock production
• review and improvement of the evaluation of the risk to groundwater from pesticides

The goal for reduction of the treatment frequency index will be set every three years. The first goal is to reduce the treatment frequency index to less than 2.0 before the end of 2002. Based on this goal, certain guidelines (norm figures) were placed to instruct on the correct frequency of treatment. These guidelines, and the demand that all farmers were to keep a spraying log documenting their pesticide usage, ended in many farmers realizing their actual pesticide usage. The results were prompt: already in 2000 – two years ahead of the Plan – the treatment frequency had fallen to 2.0.

Danish experiences
The guideline figures revealed to many farmers that they were over-using pesticides. But they also revealed that the pesticide usage of some farmers was well below the norm, without a reduced yield. At the same time, agricultural studies showed that the increased output by frequent spraying was so small that it could not cover the extra expense of pesticides. For example a set of experiments with winter wheat in 2001 showed that the highest profits were reached with a treatment frequency of 1.2, well below the norm-figure of 2.3 for winter wheat.
    Thus, the Danish experiences show that there is great potential for pesticide reduction in agriculture, and that the reductions start to show only when the farmers are motivated to reduce their usage. It is therefore important to have pesticide reduction plans that force the farmers to overcome the barriers that prevent them from discovering the possibilities to reduce pesticide usage.
    In Denmark, both farming and pesticide dealers’ organisations cooperate to reach the goal of the action plan. This is in large part due to the fact that they participated in the Bichel-Committee’s work elucidating the consequences of pesticide use and the possibility of reducing it.

1.The treatment frequency index expresses the average number of times per year agricultural land can be treated with the quantity of pesticides sold, assuming that they are used in the prescribed normal dosages. The Bichel Committee states that the treatment frequency index is considered the best indicator of the environmental burden.
2. Highly active pesticides, where usage is less than 20 gram active ingredients/ha as opposed to normally 1-2 kg active ingredients/ha.

Hans Nielsen, Danish Ecological Council, (Det Økologiske Råd), Landgreven 7, 4, DK – 1301 København K, Tel. +45 33 18 19 44, Fax. +45 33 15 09 71, hans@ecocouncil.dk, www.ecocouncil.dk

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 57, September 2002, page 10]