eprintid: 41437
rev_number: 3
eprint_status: archive
userid: 10747
dir: disk0/00/04/14/37
datestamp: 2021-08-12 10:37:40
lastmod: 2021-08-12 10:37:40
status_changed: 2021-08-12 09:42:12
type: journalp
metadata_visibility: show
doclang: en
projects: fr-INRAe
budget: 0
projectid: HAL-INRAe
docurl: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01608601
publicfulltext: FALSE
creators_name: Lechenet, Martin
creators_name: Dessaint, Fabrice
creators_name: Py, Guillaume
creators_name: Makowski, David
creators_name: Munier-Jolain, Nicolas
title: Reducing pesticide use while preserving crop productivity and profitability on arable farms
subjects: 1organics
abstract: Achieving sustainable crop production while feeding an increasing world population is one of the most ambitious challenges of this century1. Meeting this challenge will necessarily imply a drastic reduction of adverse environmental effects arising from agricultural activities2. The reduction of pesticide use is one of the critical drivers to preserve the environment and human health. Pesticide use could be reduced through the adoption of new production strategies3–5; however, whether substantial reductions of pesticide use are possible without impacting crop productivity and profitability is debatable6–17. Here, we demonstrated that low pesticide use rarely decreases productivity and profitability in arable farms. We analysed the potential conflicts between pesticide use and productivity or profitability with data from 946 non-organic arable commercial farms showing contrasting levels of pesticide use and covering a wide range of production situations in France. We failed to detect any conflict between low pesticide use and both high productivity and high profitability in 77% of the farms. We estimated that total pesticide use could be reduced by 42% without any negative effects on both productivity and profitability in 59% of farms from our national network. This corresponded to an average reduction of 37, 47 and 60% of herbicide, fungicide and insecticide use, respectively. The potential for reducing pesticide use appeared higher in farms with currently high pesticide use than in farms with low pesticide use. Our results demonstrate that pesticide reduction is already accessible to farmers in most production situations. This would imply profound
date: 2017
publication: Nature Plants
publisher: Nature Publishing Group
full_text_status: none
pagerange: 6
id_number: https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2017.8
issn: ISSN: 2055-026X
conf_subm: not_subm
fp7_project: no
access_rights: info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
citation:    Lechenet, Martin; Dessaint, Fabrice; Py, Guillaume; Makowski, David and Munier-Jolain, Nicolas   (2017) Reducing pesticide use while preserving crop productivity and profitability on arable farms.   Nature Plants, p. 6.