‘Plan Bee’ innovation driving new generation of crop and seed protection [Advocacy Lab Content]

The mighty bee is increasingly deployed as a key player in maintaining biodiversity through pollination. Bee vectoring technology is just one innovation boosting crop and seed protection, but many alternative pest control methods are getting stuck in research labs.

According to the United Nations, pollination is crucial for food security, nutrition, and the environment’s health. Bees and other pollinators contribute 35 % of the world’s total crop production, pollinating 87 of 115 leading food crops worldwide. Pollination is responsible for nearly 90 % of wildflower plants and 75 % of edible plants.

Now, one company is pioneering using bees and pollination for crop protection.

Bee vectoring technology is a precision agriculture system that utilises commercially reared bees to administer targeted crop controls through pollination. The bumblebees or honey bees carry and deliver natural biopesticides or biocontrol agents directly to the flowers of crops as they pollinate.

The bees obtain the bio-control powder from dispensers placed at the entrance of their hives. As the bees visit flowers to collect pollen and nectar, the powder falls onto the blooms, allowing the biocontrol agent to protect the crops from diseases and pests.

This targeted delivery system uses substantially less product than conventional spraying, drastically reducing chemical pesticide usage, which is a significant contributing factor to the decline of over 40% of insect species.

In 2020, the Canadian company (Bee Vectoring Technologies) opened its European office in Switzerland. This February, it announced trials in Spain funded by the European Commission’s Horizon Research and Innovations Action in collaboration with a Spanish Bio factory that rears insects for pest control.

This is just one of several game-changing innovations being explored in European seed and crop protection – innovations that are becoming increasingly necessary to achieve the ambitious pesticide reduction targets envisioned by the European Commission.

The Farm to Fork challenge

On 22 June 2022, the European Commission published its proposal for a new Regulation on the Sustainable Use of Plant Protection Products (SUR). These included EU-wide targets to reduce the use and risk of chemical pesticides by 50 % by 2030, which aligns with the EU’s Farm to Fork and Biodiversity strategies.

The new proposals were part of a package of measures to reduce the environmental footprint of the EU’s food system and help mitigate the economic and biodiversity losses from climate change.

It was supported by thousands of scientists and over one million EU citizens who voted for a more substantial pesticide reduction in the Save Bees and Farmers European Citizens Initiative (ECI).

Nevertheless, several stakeholders strongly opposed the new regulations, including the pesticide industry and industrial farming lobby. Following weeks of farmers’ protests in early 2024, the Commission eventually withdrew the proposal in February after it failed to garner the necessary support in the European Parliament.

Despite lacking a Parliament position, EU agriculture ministers tried to continue working on the Regulation under the leadership of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU. The Spanish Presidency altered the Commission’s original text, including eliminating national reduction targets.

In January of this year, as the Belgians took over the Council Presidency reins from the Spanish, they proposed to save sections of the regulation, particularly those related to biocontrol products and the alternatives to chemical pesticides, but with little success.

Farmers target-focused

Aside from the industry’s recalcitrance on the issue, does this setback mean farmers are unwilling to meet their targets? The short answer is no, with many farmers knowing the harmful consequences.

According to Emma Brown, Director of Public Affairs at CropLife Europe, the challenge is removing agricultural tools like chemical pesticides from a farmer’s toolkit needs to be replaced with something else; she says not replacing the current toolkit risks sending food production backwards, the opposite of what Europe needs.

This is where new agricultural technologies come into play, and they’re evolving faster than ever.

Biopesticides, for example, are a new class of crop protection products that use natural living organisms, such as microbes and insects. Other technologies include applying new seed coatings before planting, which can also protect against pests and diseases, negating the need for pesticides altogether.

Also, new research projects include sequencing pest genomes to identify species-specific target proteins and using LED beams to accurately identify insect species for surveillance programmes.

Sprouting support and success

Despite the potential, new products still take over a decade to be certified and placed on the market.

According to Sam Cook, a behavioural ecologist at Rothamsted Research Centre, alternative pest control methods “aren’t really coming through, and they’re getting stuck in research labs.”

“There’s all this pest control for free out there, and we’re not using it properly for farmers,” she said, lamenting that there’s “a lot in the research pipeline, but it’s not getting out of the pipeline,” Cook told Euractiv.

According to the researcher, regulation is a big part of the issue. Companies are unwilling to invest in alternatives because they know the regulatory process is difficult and expensive and assume it’s not worth the investment.

This means that the burden of risk remains squarely on the farmer’s shoulders. Currently, there doesn’t seem to be enough reward for those farmers trying to do the right thing, “and that needs to change,” Cook said.

As with all agricultural innovations, be they digital or biological, the new methods are ‘knowledge-intensive’; farmers require support to effectively implement strategies at farm level. They need encouragement, proper investment, and support from the EU and Member States.

“My feeling would be that, if [the EU is] really going to go for this [2030] target, we must try and build up confidence and types of alternative control,” she said, stressing the need to “get farmers groups on board,” Cook concluded.

Effectiveness and proper use

Likewise, the Commission acknowledged that “[a] key hurdle in the adoption of IPM [integrated pest management] and novel technologies is the uncertainty farmers face regarding their effectiveness and proper use” in a leaked impact assessment of the EU’s plan to slash the use and risk of pesticides in half by 2030.

One such farmer who found the confidence and is reaping the rewards of alternative pest control is Jean-Philippe Petillon, a farmer who grows beets, cereals and rape on 100 hectares in Richeville, north of Paris.

Petillon established beetles on the green strips between the fields, which eat the slugs against which he used to spread poison.

Investigate Europe describes how he drastically reduced the use of herbicides with the “false seed bed” method. He first allows the weeds to germinate in the seed furrows and then pulls them out with a cultivator before the actual grain sowing without damaging the soil. He also practices crop rotation with eight different crops.

“We now use about 50 % less pesticides than neighbouring farms, increasing profits,” he says. “My accountant even asked me if I had lost the bills!”

[By Elizabeth De Gaetano  I Edited by Brian Maguire | Euractiv’s Advocacy Lab ]

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