European Commission focuses on food safety and pesticide residues
Following the new maximum residue levels (MRLs) on pesticides which came into force on 1st September, TheEuropean Commission’s website has put food safety and pesticides in the spotlight on their homepage. The piece includes a link to the new legislation, a factsheet on pesticide residues, a brochure on 50 years of food safety and a database to check your food for pesticide limits.
Yes, there is a clear message here, but is it strong enough?
My interpretation of this message: If the EU parliament accepts the proposed revision of directive 91/414 as it stands, a number of UK farmers can no longer afford to grow sugar beet economically, because their “pesticide tool box” has been drastically reduced. As a consequence, different cultural practises will have to be [re-]adopted, which as a matter of fact date back to the time before efficient weed management programmes and monogerm, pelleted seed became available. A number of farmers will have to give up growing sugar beet altogether; not only for financial reasons, but also because the required manual labour is no longer there. Not only the acreages, but also the yields/Ha will fall. This in turn will force closure of sugar factories resulting in increased “food miles”, higher production costs etc. This scenario will sooner or later result in sugar shortages in the UK.
Unfortunately, this message only addresses the impending problems for the UK. However, the scale of the problem is much and much bigger; it is global.
To understand the full implications, reference is made to the excellent treatise on sugar beet by Philip Draycott (2006). The statistics I will have to use date from 2004. Even if 2008 data would be available, I believe that the conclusions will largely or even completely the same.
In 2004, approx. 35 million tons of sugar was produced from sugar beet. The major players were the EU countries with a production of 19.7 million tons (more than 57% of the global beet sugar production). The sugar beet acreage in the EU was 2.2M Ha. This acreage would double to 4.4 M Ha when the other European countries, like Russia and the Ukraine are included. However, this does not mean that the sugar output would double, for the entire sugar production in Europe (including the EU) was 26.3 M ton sugar. On average, one Ha in the EU yielded 9 MT sugar, while the average yield in the non-EU all European countries is only 2.7 MT sugar / Ha.
Since the EU legislation will result in severe cuts in the pesticide portfolio available to sugar beet growers in all EU member states, all those countries will face the same issues as the UK: decreased sugar beet acreages, reduced farmers’ incomes, lower sugar yields/ha, increased production costs. It also eliminates the possibility of importing sugar from other member states. Importing into the EU from the other European countries? Looking at the considerably lower sugar yields / Ha, it is doubtful there will be any surpluses.
One could try to argue that there is still no problem even if the revision of 91/414 is accepted, because we can always import cane sugar. After all, the global cane sugar output amounts to nearly 110 MT. A number of demographic facts convince me of the opposite.
The average annual sugar consumption in Europe and North- and Central America has stabilized itself at 40 and 37 kg sugar/capita, respectively. However, as could be observed in the West, increased prosperity in developing economies like results in higher sugar consumption. The annual per capita sugar consumption in the whole of Asia was 16.5 kg sugar in 2004. This is growing and will presumably start to level off at 40 kg / capita, certainly in China and India. There is good evidence that this assumption makes sense, for since 1970 the consumption of calories in China grew by 50% and in India by 25%. If the forecasts are correct, there will be an extra 2.5 billion mouths that need feeding by 2050 (with the population growth being highest in Asia). These two factors are a clear indication that the global demand for sugar will grow drastically.
This said, I believe that there should be a much stronger message. Avoiding scare mongering, we must make everybody realize that if we are not careful and look at all aspects, soon there will be serious global shortages of commodities, which we always took for granted.
Also, I hope the European sugar industry is already lobbying the politicians in their countries. The message: Focus your attention on how we can responsible maximize beet sugar production to meet future requirements, rather than bringing beet sugar production in the EU in jeopardy through debatable pesticide legislation.
Marten Snel
16 September 2008