Pesticide Information

In a similar vein to what we’re trying to do here on pesticideinformation.eu i.e. present all sides of the story, BBC Radio Humberside recently interviewed spokespeople from both the UK NGO, The Soil Association, and the National Farmers Union, on the impending legislative proposals governing pesticides in the EU. Two well articluated but of course different takes on the issues and well worth a listen.

BBC: Soil Association

BBC: NFU

On our recent farm trip to the JSR farms in Driffield, East Yorkshire, United Kingdom (see entries below), we spoke to a couple of the journalists present at the event to get their take on the issues of how pesticides are portrayed in the media, what they see as driving the debate, and what they have been discovering as they have been researching their stories. A few clips from our conversations may be seen here.

In this clip, Philip Huxtable speaks about Integrated Farm Management (IFM) on his farm. European farmers are increasingly adopting and developing IFM, which combines traditional farming methods with modern technology and products: ‘the best of both’. This approach combines techniques such as crop rotation to prevent the build-up of certain pests in one field, choosing varieties of crops which are more resistant to disease, crop sanitation, and biological controls i.e. promoting beneficial insects that eat target pests, and only using pesticides (chemical crop protection) as the last line of defence.

As promised last week, here’s some more footage from our visit to JSR Farms in East Yorkshire, where Philip Huxtable, who has run JSR Farms for over 30 years, spoke to us about the potential effects of the proposed revision of the European Directive governing pesticides (91/414).