Advancing pesticide use reduction in Germany

The policy aspects of pesticide reduction are being taken seriously in Germany: the German Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (BMVEL) recently sponsored a workshop to try to establish pesticide policy guidelines and PAN Germany has initiated discussions on developing a pesticide use reduction strategy. Carina Weber and Susanne Smolka report.

The BMVEL Workshop took place at the end of March and was attended by over 60 representatives of ministries, local authorities and a wide range of non-governmental organisations. Although communications and transparency also featured in the agenda, policy aspects dominated the discussion.
    A political coalition, including the Greens, has long been calling for the development of a strategy for the reduction of pesticide use. A preliminary workshop was held in Potsdam in May 2002 to discuss policy aspects of pest control. The purpose was to establish guidelines for the future policy approach to pesticide use and to work out areas of agreement and disagreement on the various issues. The BMVEL Workshop focussed on more concrete policy proposals. Participants were under pressure to make recommendations because Agriculture Minister Künast will soon be making decisions on setting up the German pesticide reduction programme.

Consensus building
The Workshop participants came from very diverse areas of interest: commerce, agriculture, domestic users, economic unions, the pesticide industry, environmental agencies, etc. It was expected, therefore, that consensus could only be reached in ‘soft’ policy areas. All agreed, for example, that there was a need for improvement in the advisory services, supervision, technical contributions and research. Consensus was also reached on the need to publish detailed data on levels of pesticide use, which, once publicly available, would lead to a reduction in use. However, no consensus could be reached on making aims and time frames legally binding. There was nevertheless, some discernable movement even in the ‘hard’ areas, stemming not only from the national situation (change in government, food scandals) but also from international developments (EU pesticides policies and consumer and data protection policies).
    There is a great need for clarity in the method of measuring pesticide reduction and making the results transparent: until now PAN Germany has been promoting a reduction in quantity without access to any specialized data. At the BMVEL Workshop, PAN stressed that qualitative parameters would be acceptable only if pesticide use levels were made fully transparent and if research and debate did not lead to a long delay before the reduction was put into effect.
    PAN initiated an open discussion with wide participation of the major players to address the question of how the reduction of pesticide use could be quantified. The discussion was very lively and results were taken up in the plenary session. The proposal that emerged was that by using the data on pesticide applications collected every 3 years under NEPTUN(1), combined with risk indicators and licensing operations data, it would be possible to create a risk index for the whole of Germany or for a region.
    Another positive outcome of the Workshop was some shifting of opinion on economic instruments – long demanded by PAN Germany. Carina Weber of PAN Germany believes that, ‘tax has, until recently, been a taboo subject in the politics of pesticide use but gradually more people have accepted the idea of taxing commercial pesticides use to fund improvements in the independent advisory services – but putting the idea into practice is a political issue. Workshop participants agreed that for potential improvements there had to be, among other things, an economic incentive as a first step. At a meeting hosted by the Institute for Integrated Pest Control (IIPC) in January this year, PAN Germany took the opportunity to discuss these issues with representatives of local government.
    Discussions centred on problems with current agricultural practice and suggestions for improvements. There was unanimous condemnation of the poor implementation of the integrated pest control (IPC) system which was originally set up as a model and given legal status. For example, conventional apple producers have on the whole adopted a controlled integrated system and use it as a symbol of quality in marketing. In other branches of agriculture the adoption of such a standard is the exception rather than the rule. Unfortunately it appears that such a model, without criteria or legal enforcement, has only a limited validity. PAN has long demanded that in addition to good professional practice there should be legal enforcement of IPC based on specific criteria for each crop. Only then will it be possible to assess the system and develop a strategy for reducing the use of pesticides.
    There was general agreement on the very obvious defects of the advisory sector. The Federal Institute for Biological Research into Agriculture and Forestry (BBA) and PAN Germany agree that the poor service could be improved by the use of a pesticide tax, imposed as a ‘Dedicated Group Users Tax’, which would fund pest control directly. A tax of only two Euros per kilo of a commercial product would yield sufficient funds to train an average of 15 advisors for each Federal State.
    Another important consideration is making information on non-chemical pest control methods available to growers. PAN Germany has proposed an on-line service for non-chemical pest control and BBA is in fact creating a similar service providing information in German on conventional as well as organic farming methods. PAN Germany already operates a similar international on-line service targeting groups in tropical and sub-tropical areas.

Motivating growers to reduce pesticide use
BBA has also suggested that the so-called ‘Norm-based Application Index’ be used to measure the reduction in pesticide use. A single application of a treatment at maximum permitted dose per hectare is awarded 1 in the index. An application of reduced dose or over only part of an area is awarded less than 1. BBA has also suggested that such an index could be used as the basis for awarding a quality seal to farmers with less than the average level of pesticide applications on their land. PAN-Germany’s view is that further concrete criteria would be needed for the granting of a seal, such as adopting the IPC system and taking up training programmes. Moreover, no strategy for pesticide reduction should be based on the current average figures for pesticide use: the quality of an agricultural product distinguished by a seal would have to be based on the best contemporary practice, as a reward for commitment and a model for future efforts.

1. NEPTUN is an instrument for identifying the application of pesticides in different agricultural areas and natural environments.
Carina Weber is Director and Susanne Smolka is Project Coordinator of PAN Germany.
<carina.weber@pan-germany.org> <susanne.smolka@pan-germany.org>

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 60, June 2003, page 16]