Recommendations for the EU Vision for Agriculture and Food
The EU Vision for Agriculture and Food should prioritise policy action to ambitiously reduce pesticides. Reducing pesticide use and risk is a key objective of the Green Deal. Reducing pesticide use and risk is essential to apply and implement the political principles and recommendations of the outcome of the Strategic Dialogue on EU Agriculture (SDA). The SDA report explicitly underlines the need to reduce pesticides.
The Vision for Agriculture and Food should translate the SDA recommendations into ambitious, concrete and result-based policy action. Pesticides are one of the most important causes of the collapse of biodiversity and the pollution crisis, undermining ecosystem services and harming human health. Ambitiously reducing pesticide dependency is an urgent necessity for restoring and protecting nature, a healthy environment and thriving and resilient food production systems in Europe.
The urgent need to reduce pesticides is loudly called for by scientists, citizens and many farmers. Through Eurobarometers and multiple consultations (e.g. the Conference for the Future of Europe), as well as through two European Citizens’ initiatives, Europeans expressed their will to ambitiously reduce pesticides. An IPSOS Poll from 2023 showed a high and constant agreement in 6 Member States from different EU zones, on the need for protective pesticide legislation, uptake alternatives to pesticides and to stop financial support to harmful agricultural practices. However, the Save Bees and Farmers (2023) and Stop Glyphosate (2017) ECI’s, which demanded ambitious reductions of pesticide use, are still waiting for concrete answers and actions from EU policy makers.
PAN Europe has analysed the report of the Strategic Dialogue on Agriculture. We set out below:
- Important outcomes and recommendations of the SDA report linked to pesticide use (in box)
- Concrete needed actions for their implementation, and for uptake in the EU Vision for Agriculture and Food
