Abstract
While pesticides are essential to agriculture and food systems to sustain current production levels, they also lead to significant environmental impacts. The use of pesticides is constantly increasing globally, driven mainly by a further intensification of agriculture, despite stricter regulations and higher pesticide effectiveness. To further the understanding of future pesticide use and make informed farm-to-policy decisions, we developed Pesticide Agricultural Shared Socio-economic Pathways (Pest-AgriSSPs) in six steps. The Pest-Agri-SSPs are developed based on an extensive literature review and expert feedback approach considering significant climate and socio-economic drivers from farm to continental scale in combination with multiple actors impacting them. In literature, pesticide use is associated with farmer behaviour and practices, pest damage, technique and efficiency of pesticide application, agricultural policy and agriculture demand and production. Here, we developed PestAgri-SSPs upon this understanding of pesticide use drivers and relating them to possible agriculture development as described by the Shared Socio-economic Pathways for European agriculture and food systems (Eur-Agri-SSPs).The Pest-AgriSSPs are developed to explore European pesticide use in five scenarios representing low to high challenges to mitigation and adaptation up to 2050. The most sustainable scenario (Pest-Agri-SSP1) shows a decrease in pesticide use owing to sustainable agricultural practices, technological advances and better implementation of agricultural policies. On the contrary, the Pest-Agri-SSP3 and Pest-Agri-SSP4 show a higher increase in pesticide use resulting from higher challenges from pest pressure, resource depletion and relaxed agricultural policies. Pest-Agri-SSP2 presents a stabilised pesticide use resulting from stricter policies and slow transitions by farmers to sustainable agricultural practices. At the same time, pest pressure, climate change and food demand pose serious challenges. Pest-Agri-SSP5 shows a decrease in pesticide use for most drivers, influenced mainly by rapid technological development and sustainable agricultural practices. However, Pest-Agri-SSP5 also presents a relatively low rise in pesticide use driven by agricultural demand, production, and climate change. Our results highlight the need for a holistic approach to tackle pesticide use, considering the identified drivers and future developments. The storylines and qualitative assessment provide a platform to make quantitative assumptions for numerical modelling and evaluating policy targets.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 118078 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-12 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Journal of Environmental Management |
| Volume | 342 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 15 Sept 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work is part of the Innovative Training Network ECORISK2050 and was supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No [ 813124 ].
Funding Information:
Policy and institutions summarise different regulatory drivers that can influence pesticide use. They highlight the mandatory actions that the producers and government officials must undertake to check for compliance. The national & international agreements refer to multilateral agreements that define crop standards in the EU and third countries with pesticide active ingredient use and Maximum Residual Limits (MRL) on crops. These agreements also include European strategies and directives, such as the National action plans, the sustainable use of pesticides (Directive 2009/128/EC, 2009) and the EU Green Deal (European Commission, 2020). Agri-environmental payments are part of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which aims to support EU farmers in achieving the EU Green Deal targets. Additionally, levying pesticide taxes can change farmers’ behaviour. Further, pesticide tax is used to pay for farm aid programs and prevent the use of synthetic pesticides in agriculture. The policies shall ensure that the environmental quality standards are met and reduce the risk and impacts of pesticide use on the environment (Directive 2008/105/EC, 2008). Similarly, the applied pesticide levels on crops are regulated through MRLs (Regulation (EC) No 396/2005, 2005). The EU regulates the approval of active pesticide ingredients through thorough risk evaluation and registration schemes (Council Directive 91/414/EEC, 1991; Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009, 2009). As a result, pesticide ingredients need to be labelled with instructions of use on the packaging that helps in the pesticide application process and for consumer awareness on food packaging. Several European countries provide decision aid on the type of pesticides effective to control a particular pest, forecast pest outbreaks and approved dosage of pesticide application.This work is part of the Innovative Training Network ECORISK2050 and was supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No [813124].
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors
Keywords
- Agriculture and food systems
- Farm characteristics
- Pest damage
- Policy
- Socioeconomic
- Technology
