Pesticide Information

Just watched an interesting video of Bill Gates presenting at a TED conference in America this month. He is talking about two ongoing societal challenges that he is passionate about. The first is malaria; he talks through the facts and the solutions with some interesting statistics, and the second is on education and what makes a great teacher. Worth a watch.

Bees are a fundamental part of sustainable agriculture. Bees and other pollinating insects are responsible for the pollination of more than 80% of crops in Europe. So it’s been extremely worrying to see a mass decline in them over the past years. It’s got to such a critical point that this year the EU has funded a nine-month research project to better understand the problem and investigate the potential cause.

The Environmental Expert.com published an article recently about the development of a tool to help standardise risk assessment procedures for pesticides across Europe. The software combines climate, soil and crops data specific to each location to help understand the potential impact of each pesticide used.

We recently spoke to Frederic Rosseneu, the Food Safety Adviser at Freshfel Europe (European Fresh Produce – fruits and vegetables -  Association), about the use of pesticdes in the sector he represents. He gave us some very interesting insights into: