POTATO growers have been told that changes to the EU Directive (91/414) governing pesticide use could have been a lot worse, but the industry still needs to plan ahead and embrace integrated pest and farm management.
Speaking at a Branston technical meeting, David Payne, senior registration manager for Syngenta Crop Protection said that while there was cause for optimism, the changes to legislation would still have a significant impact in the UK.
“We initially thought that if a pesticide triggered one criteria, it would be banned,” explained Mr Payne.
“However, the revision 91/414 sees pesticides banned if they trigger two out of three criteria. At one point it looked like we would lose about 85 per cent of the 267 agricultural pesticides on the EU approved list, but this will not be the case.”
