EU pesticide proposals threaten tillage farming

TILLAGE farming may become uneconomic due to EU proposals to limit effective products used to control the fungal diseases to which Irish grain and potato crops are uniquely vulnerable.

So said Dr Tom McCabe of the UCD School of Agriculture, Food Science and Veterinary Medicine at a recent Animal and Plant Health Association (APHA) conference. “A reduction in the range of effective products would lead to critical problems of disease resistance, thereby jeopardising crop yield and quality,” said Dr McCabe.

“We need only to look at the example in 2002, when the wheat disease septoria developed resistance to a group of products, called strobilurins, to see the risks associated with a narrow range of products,” he added.