Agro Fossil Free - Plantebeskyttelse og EU's fødevaresystem. Hvor skal de hen?

General beskrivelse

The need for an ecological transition is now finally starting to be discussed by governments and international organisations around the world. This and the climate momentum can give us real hope that action may start to be taken to shift our production and consumption systems towards a circular and sustainable model. But talking is one thing, and doing is another. Without fundamental changes, the costs of dealing with global heating, extreme weather events and consequences of biodiversity loss will soon be difficult to sustain, and in order to address these challenges, all sectors need to embrace this transition, and agriculture is no exception. In Europe, where agricultural land accounts for almost half of the European territory, it is evident that the way we farm can make fundamental changes in addressing today’s challenges. How we protect our crops against pest and disease attack is one issue that must be effectively addressed, and in recent years the use of pesticides has become emblematic of the wider concerns of how we manage our agricultural systems today. Arguments have become entrenched as ‘for’ and ‘against’; between gains in agricultural productivity and growing demand, on one hand, and the resulting environmental and health costs, on the other. There are opportunities to be gained here, as elsewhere in agriculture. In order to tackle the issue of crop protection, we need to move away from reliance on chemistry alone towards more actively working with nature and biological solutions. To enable this, the system must be helped to become more resilient by restoring natural ecosystem functioning. Farming practices must adapt, land use change is necessary, technology and innovation embraced. By addressing the system of agriculture as a whole we can move to eliminate the harm of these products, whilst simultaneously tackling biodiversity restoration, reversing soil degradation, improving soil sequestration and water quality. In order to be effective in changing one aspect of the way we farm, we need to address the whole food chain, including consumption and production methods. The key word here is ‘systemic’. There must be systemic transformation in the agricultural system if we are to reduce the harm caused by our current predominant form of production. Strong regulations on what we apply on our fields will always be necessary, but perhaps by focusing less on doing ‘less bad’ and celebrating the opportunities that this transition can bring, we can enable and engage stakeholders to find ways to benefit from the wholesale shift in the way in which we farm today.