Deliverable No. D6.3 - Internal report on farm level impacts of different pesticide reduction strategies

Summary in the original language of the document

All around the world, massive use of plant protection products (PPPs) led to current issues regarding negative impacts on human health, soil and water contaminations. It is of high necessity to reduce PPP use and find novel strategies to control pest and diseases. Several studies showed how the transformation of agriculture could lead to more sustainable use of pesticides (Hofmann et al., 2023; Lee et al., 2019). A range of plant protection tools and strategies to reduce pesticide use are available (Pertot et al., 2017). Those methods include resistant varieties, crop rotation, mechanical weed control, biocontrol agents (macrobials, microbials and natural substances, use of semiochemicals and physical mating disruption, decision support systems (Delière et al., 2015) and monitoring. For example, diverse crop rotations are an essential tool to increase the resilience of crops and to preventively reduce risks due to pests and diseases. Today, the adoption of available tools and techniques is still limited especially in mainstream agriculture. Hurdles for adoption include availability of tools for key pests, high costs, limitations in efficacy and trust by farmers.