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Economic sustainability: Less pesticide rarely causes loss

Nature Plants volume 3, Article number: 17016 (2017) Cite this article

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A large-scale study covering a wide range of arable farming systems reveals that, besides the obvious environmental benefits, low pesticide use rarely decreases productivity and profitability.

The farms examined by Lechenet et al. demonstrated contrasting levels of pesticide use and covered a wide range of production situations. In 77% of the farms, there was no conflict between low pesticide use and high productivity or profitability, whereas total pesticide use could be reduced by 42% without any negative economic effects in 59% of the farms from this national network. Obviously, this potential for reducing pesticide use appeared higher in farms that had high pesticide use than in farms with low pesticide use. The remaining 23% of farms, which displayed conflicts between pesticide reduction and productivity and/or profitability, were mainly associated with high presence of industrial crops that were characterized by both high pesticide use and high added value. In such context, farmers are reluctant to reduce pesticide use as this would lead to lower productivity and profitability. Lechenet et al. rightly stress that this latter finding emphasizes the need for further technical innovation for these crops to reduce their reliance on pesticide. Indeed, after the European Union Directive 2009/128/EC on sustainable use of pesticides that made Integrated Pest Management (IPM) compulsory for European Union members, there has been an effort to identify innovative IPM tools and strategies and to redesign current cropping systems to reduce pesticide risks whilst ensuring economic profitability, environmental safety and social sustainability in European cropping systems4.

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Figure 1: Pre-emergence herbicide in band application during maize sowing.

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  1. Vasileios P. Vasileiadis is in the Institute of Agro-Environmental and Forest Biology, National Research Council (CNR), 35020 Legnaro (PD), Italy.,

    Vasileios P. Vasileiadis

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  1. Vasileios P. Vasileiadis
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Correspondence to Vasileios P. Vasileiadis.

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Vasileiadis, V. Economic sustainability: Less pesticide rarely causes loss. Nature Plants 3, 17016 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2017.16

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