What future for plant protection products?

The problems of re-registering Plant Protection Products (PPPs) and the loss of active ingredients have been well publicised but there is a way of mitigating the effect which has not received enough attention. In fact, speaking at an Oxford Farming Conference debate on the subject at Cereals 2016, Paul Miller called it the “only way.” As director of Silsoe Spray Applications Ltd his believe is that not enough attention has been paid to using machine design as a means of reducing risk. 

“Of course we need to have products that work but we also need to get the best out of them and this calls for a whole industry approach. I believe that we are now starting to assemble a toolbox that minimises risk to the environment in a meaningful way.

“For example we need to consider ways of applying products exactly where we want them. We need to think more about the likely loss of active ingredients because of water toxicity reasons.

“We now have the ability to transfer chemicals from the containers in which they are delivered into the application machine without risk of spillage and contamination. It is also much easier now to measure and manage the chemical left in the sprayer at the end of a job and thereby negate disposal problems,” Mr Miller said.

If the loss of active ingredients was to be arrested the physical scientists needed to work more closely with the biologists and the chemists, he believed.

The problem of loss certainly exists. Debate chairman and OFC director Tom Allen-Stevens pointed to the 67 PPPs whose registration expires before the end of 2017 and the 51 which expire by the end of 2018. Many were key products with glyphosate, neonicitinoids and those classified as possible endocrine disrupters at risk.

Hertfordshire farmer Andrew Watts illustrated the dilemma he and fellow producers were in.  One set of regulators were concerned about the presence of mycotoxins in cereals while another set were looking at banning the triazoles which are a key tool in minimising the problem.

Farmers could cope with the loss of some active ingredients by widening rotations but this had a cost. Increased cultivations as a substitute for an herbicide such as glyphosate might work to an extent but at the cost of vastly increased carbon emissions.

He added; “I think we need to realise that the loss of PPPs heaps more pressure on varietal resistance. We have already seen an apparently resistant wheat variety succumb to yellow rust this spring and in Hertfordshire we are already seeing complete resistance to the pyrethroids which are the only alternative to neonics for use in oilseed rape.”

The answer to the problem, said Paul Leonard Head of Innovation and Technology and EU Government Relations for BASF, lay in a change of approach at a European level.
“There is no doubt ground has been lost in the EU as a place to innovate. Since the Crop Protection Directive 91/414 was introduced in 1991 there has been a 60% reduction in the toolbox. Between 1995 and 2008 the cost of producing a product dossier has increased from $152m to $256m and 67% is compliance related leaving just 33% for innovation. The costs and difficulties had seen a reduction in major research and development centres in Europe from fifteen to only three,”said Mr Leonard.

“There is good news however,” he added. “At the moment innovation has never been higher on the EU agenda.  Jean-Claude Juncker (President of the EU Commission) has appointed, for the first time ever a vice-president to review regulation. That is encouraging but we need more in the way of behavioural change. Innovation should be at the core of European society.”

The footage can be viewed here.