Pesticide rules tighten the screw for Scots potato producers

And potato growers meeting in Perth were told yesterday by Dr Peter Brain, of agrichemical giant Bayer Crop Science, that the rate of new products now coming through the approval system was dramatically slowing down.

Twenty years ago there were 831 different pesticides approved for use in the EU but that figure is now down to 368 following the introduction of regulation 1107/2009 and Brain reckoned that many more would disappear when the full impact of the legislation kicks in.

Many of the banned substances, such as sulphuric acid, mono linuron and paraquat, were used extensively in potato production but they have now gone and Brain, describing the reduced number of new pesticides coming through, said there was “no cavalry waiting in the wings”.

There are only half a dozen major companies in this area of work and they need to have deep pockets and lots of patience. He listed the cost of getting a single new pesticide through the system at about €300 million along with a timescale of more than a decade.

In order to protect their potential earners, companies also tended to apply early in development for patent rights but the downside to that was it reduced the earning life of the product before it went “off list”.

Scottish growers also heard Danish agricultural adviser Lars Bedkar speak about the consequences of his government’s decision to impose a tax of between 25 and 35 per cent on pesticides in order to reduce their usage. This has been introduced by politicians concerned about such issues as pollution of drinking water and it comes after the failure of a proposal to limit any crop spraying to a maximum of 1.7 occasions in the lifetime of the crop.

Although the politicians have included a clause which says that this should not lead to the “outsourcing” of food from outwith Denmark, he was not sure this buying in produce from other countries would not take place.

Meanwhile, Danish farmers are using more mechanical efforts to deal with weeds in their crops and are reducing their spray application rates even for potentially serious diseases such as potato blight.

“With increased costs, we are now looking at net benefit from our spray regimes rather than total control,” Bedkar said.

If these measures did not work, he said he was concerned that producers might just give up: “I am afraid the extra cost will force producers out. I just do not know where this will end.”

Also speaking at the conference, Dr Gerry Saddler of the Science and Advice for Scottish Agricultural agency said he hoped last year’s rise in seed potato rejections due to blackleg was a wake-up call to growers to tighten up their management.

“We may have taken our eye off the ball and we need to remember basic husbandry rules to help keep this disease at bay.”

While there were areas where research work could help in providing answers to this bacterial disease, he said, most of the knowledge for blackleg control was already in the hands of seed and ware growers.