Head over to www.hungry4change.eu for your chance to join the debate on the future of sustainable agricultural productivity in Europe. This November the crop protection (pesticide) industry will webcast the ‘Hungry for Change’ conference. You can have your say via Facebook and Twitter; this is a unique opportunity to share your thoughts and ideas with industry, experts and stakeholders.
This week in Germany, the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) released the findings of a survey studying consumer knowledge about pesticides – the result – people don’t know much about pesticides. In the very same week ‘green’ activists Greenpeace Germany embarrassed themselves by publishing false claims about pesticide levels in food. A member of the public can be forgiven for missing the point about pesticides – but Greenpeace?
Pesticides are used to kill the bugs and diseases that destroy agricultural crops. These bugs and diseases are part of ‘biodiversity’, the variety that exists between life forms. Paradoxically agriculture needs biodiversity – relies on it in fact. Biodiversity pollinates plants, it purifies water, prevents soil erosion, it even helps control the climate through the sequestration of carbon dioxide. Without biodiversity there would be no agriculture, but left to the mercy of biological diversity, and the hard knocks rule of survival of the fittest (Darwin’s ‘natural selection’) we would struggle to feed ourselves – pests and plant diseases taking food from our mouths.
Fresh water is a renewable resource, but our supply of clean fresh water is decreasing – a problem aggravated by a steadily increasing demand for food as the worlds population grows.
