The European Union (EU) is developing a new ‘Thematic Strategy for Pesticides’ including a proposed new ‘Sustainable Use Directive’. According to the UK’s Pesticide Safety Directorate the new regulation could outlaw up to 85 percent of pesticides currently used by farmers and render conventional agriculture as it is currently practised unachievable. Professor Sir Colin Berry, Emeritus Professor of Pathology at Queen Mary College, University of London, has described the European Parliament’s document in support of the legislation as “simply an apologia for a position, not a scientific review.”
The proposal will see the EU go from a risk-based assessment of chemicals to a hazard-based one.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
This sounds like the EU idiot ban on lead in solder which makes all our electronics less reliable and shorter lived.
My first thought was WOW, may be we can make some real money exporting food, at last.
But then I remembered the French farmers. The Germans may tighten their belts, & keep going, the British may lie down & stoically starve to death, but not the French.
The French farmers will riot, as of course they should at such stupidity. I would not want to be living in Brussels, after the first crop failure, it’s likely to be burned to the ground.
Don’t these idiots realise you can drive there from France.
What wonderful news for Australian farmers, and third world farmers for that matter. See the incredible disappearing grain/cheese/beef/potato mountains that have been corrupting world agricultural markets for half a century.
Pity about the price of food and it’s impact on the poor. Pity about the reverse multiplier effect on european economies. And what deliciously ironic timing, don’t you think?
If you think a bunch of booring but clever bankers can stuff things up, just wait till you see what sort of disaster these eco-bogans can dish up when given free rein.
“I would not want to be living in Brussels, after the first crop failure, it’s likely to be burned to the ground.”
So it’s not all bad news then.
Ian, why don’t you learn about things before ranting
“If you think a bunch of booring but clever bankers can stuff things up, just wait till you see what sort of disaster these eco-bogans can dish up when given free rein.”
What disaster?
My wife is an Entomologist who works with vegetable and fruit growers and spends most of her time discouraging the use of insecticides. Most growers use them far too often and don’t understand how to use them effectively.
The problem is that using pesticides should be done carefully. Pesticides do not remove all the pests, and overuse does result in increased immunity. In fact many farmers waste huge amouts of money on using pesticides when they don’t need to.
It is far better to use Integrated Pest Management techniques… But that doesn’t make for good conspiracy theories and ‘greenie bashing’ does it?
So, NY, neither your wife nor yourself have ever been in a position where your capacity to support your family is directly contingent on use of pesticides? That figures. I bet you don’t even have a decent veggie garden.
Sure IPM techniques can be more effective, provided you have the time and resources to implement them properly. But in the real world, when a locust plague is close to making a move, sensible farmers will, and should, go for the pesticides and fast. To not do so is downright negligent.
And I must make one important correction to my above post. It was not the bankers who caused the subprime initiated global recession. It was the Clinton era legislators who compelled the banking system to loan to people who were never going to be able to repay, on housing in areas that would never hold their value. This is what constituted the “excessive debt” that drove the entire system into excess. If it had not been forced on the banking system then the rest of the market would not have gone into such a huge bubble.
So let me just rephrase that key quote.
“If you think a bunch of ignorant do-gooders can stuff-up a banking system run by prudent people with no lack of political influence, just wait till you see what sort of disaster these eco-morons can dish up when let loose on the powerless minority who run our primary means of production.”