EU goes against grain on crop treatments

Arable farmers have enjoyed much improved fortunes over the past year, and cereal crops, though still some weeks away from the start of harvest, give every impression of producing decent yields, with prices likely to be appreciably higher than for much of the past decade.

There is a dark cloud looming on the horizon, however, with the European Commission proposing drastically to reduce the armoury of pesticides and herbicides available to growers. No final decision has yet been reached, but Brussels is currently giving regulation EU 94/414 a thorough going over.

If the proposals are agreed in their present form, farmers will almost certainly be deprived of the triazole range of fungicides, which are viewed as the principal defence mechanism against septoria, the most damaging fungal disease that impacts on winter wheat crops.

Chris Cooksley, UK product manager with Bayer Crop Science, made his concerns clear at a cereals open day at Errol in Perthshire. He said: "Crops in Scotland, where we normally expect yields of up to nine tonnes per hectare, could easily – and very quickly – drop to little more than five tonnes without proper defence against fungal attacks.