Integrated Production

Integrated Production is not a new concept, and it is already being applied within certain farmers' groups across the EU. Though IP is a dynamic, stepwise, approach to farming in which farmers must adjust agricultural practices and use of alternatives over time, taking into account new knowledge and new methods. Below is a map indicating some of the groups already applying IP in Europe.

What is IP/IPM

Some other concrete examples of good farmers projects

Useful information

International Organisations working on biological control Integrated Pest Management

National studies show that farmers can save money from applying IP:

INRA, use of pesticides - November 2009 (pdf, in France)

Jacquet, F., Butault, J. P., & Guichard, L. (2011). An economic analysis of the possibility of reducing pesticides in French field crops. Ecological economics, 70(9), 1638-1648.

Concludes that pesticide use can be reduced by 30% without consequences for yields and profit margins.

Lechenet, M., Dessaint, F., Py, G. et al. Reducing pesticide use while preserving crop productivity and profitability on arable farms. Nature Plants 3, 17008 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2017.8

Based on data from 946 non-organic French arable commercial farms estimated that total pesticide use could be reduced by 42% without any negative effects on both productivity and profitability in 59% of farms from our national network. This corresponded to an average reduction of 37, 47 and 60% of herbicide, fungicide and insecticide use, respectively.

Skevas, T., & Lansink, A. O. (2014). Reducing pesticide use and pesticide impact by productivity growth: the case of Dutch arable farming. Journal of agricultural economics, 65(1), 191-211

Shows that Dutch arable farms– if compared with profit-maximizing levels – overuse 100% herbicides, 86% fungicides and 67% insecticides.

Finger, R., Möhring, N., Dalhaus, T., & Böcker, T. (2017). Revisiting pesticide taxation schemes. Ecological Economics, 134, 263-266. Link to website here.

Shows that differentiated taxation schemes have a high potential to reduce risks caused by pesticide use and that the targeted re-distribution of tax revenues in the agricultural sector is crucial to create leverage effects on pesticide use and to increase the acceptability of pesticide taxes.

Pedersen, A. B., Nielsen, H. Ø., Christensen, T., & Hasler, B. (2012). Optimising the effect of policy instruments: a study of farmers' decision rationales and how they match the incentives in Danish pesticide policy. Journal of environmental planning and management, 55(8), 1094-1110.

Data derive from a survey (1164 responses) of Danish conventional farmers' decision rationales regarding their use of pesticides show that some farmers are more economically motivated while other farmers are more focused on optimising yield and pay less attention to expenditures and crop prices, with the farmers who focus on yield indicate less responsiveness to economic policy instruments, implying that it is important to implement a broad array of policy instruments to match different farmer rationales.

Van der Ploeg, J.D et all (2019): The economic potential of agroecology: Empirical evidence from Europe, Journal of Rural Studies Volume 71, October 2019, Pages 46-61.

Shows the huge potential and radical opportunities that Europe's, often silent, ‘agroecological turn’ offers to farmers that could (and should) be the basis for the future transformation of European agricultural policies, since agroecology not only allows for more sustainable production of healthier food but also considerably improves farmers' incomes. It equally carries the promise of re-enlarging productive agricultural (and related) employment and increasing the total income generated by the agricultural sector, at both regional and national levels.

For more information and testimonies on IPM, visit our website Low Impact Farming !