Europe
June 20, 2016
The future of farming in Europe looks bleak, according to a survey of over 8,000 farmers released on 16 June 2016 by the European Farmers and European Agri-Cooperatives lobby group Copa-Cogeca. These farmers, based in 11 European Union Member States and surveyed between January and April 2016, shared their thoughts on their dissatisfaction with farming income and their disappointment of an economic turnaround. Of all the EU Member States, only farmers in Denmark and Sweden were optimistic about the current and future situation.
A farmer uses glyphosate on barley with no till farming techniques to reduce his environmental impact.
Currently one sign that events may get worse for European farmers is the issue around herbicides containing glyphosate. The European Commission has been forced into paralysis on the renewal decision of glyphosate because of a division between EU Member States. In years gone-by decisions were made on the strength of the scientific evidence by regulators, which has repeatedly resulted in glyphosate being approved for sale in the EU. Not this time. This year the process has been disrupted due in part to vociferous political campaigning by anti-pesticide campaigners and Green lobby groups.
Some farmers have campaigned on Twitter of their reasons for using glyphosate as an essential farming tool to maintain environmentally sustainable farming practices such as no-till and cover-crop farming. These practices reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help protect biodiversity. If glyphosate was banned on farms there would be a return to older chemicals, or manual or intensive mechanical weed control, resulting in more birds’ eggs and small chicks being killed, farmers say.
Some UK farmers are so frustrated that if glyphosate is not renewed they said they will vote for the UK to leave the European Union on Thursday 23rd June 2016. Coincidence or not, the European Commission’s decision on glyphosate’s renewal will take place the day afterwards, on Friday 24th June 2016.
What happens this week could result in a domino effect with a quarter of crop-protection tools in Europe being withdrawn from the market by 2018, as pressure increases from the same anti-pesticide campaigners and Green lobbyists who are attacking glyphosate today, according to the UK’s National Farmers Union.
On Wednesday 15 June 2016, at the UK’s Cereals event, growers and farmers were asked to identify the active substances they most feared losing and the impact it would have on how they farm. (Spoiler: glyphosate is one of them). Farmers said losing these products would be a disaster for future crop harvests, food production and food prices across Europe.
The implications for a negative decision on glyphosate will reverberate far beyond Europe’s borders. In one recent story published on the Canadian farming website Real Agriculture the Canadian government said it was watching events in the EU very closely. “We respect the EU’s right to manage the registration of pesticides for use in the EU. The Canadian government also strongly encourages European member states to support the reauthorized use of glyphosate,” the Canadian trade department said.
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