On March 17, 2021, Corporate Europe Observatory released a new report on the pesticide lobby’s attacks on the EU’s “Farm to Fork” strategy, including the pesticide reduction target. 

Based on internal European Commission documents and a leaked document from the lobby group Croplife Europe, the report documents the lobbying tactics used by Croplife Europe and its members, including Bayer, Syngenta and Corteva. 

The three main lobbying tactics identified in the report are: 

– Creating alarming impact studies showing the disastrous economic impact of the farm-to-fork initiative on the agricultural sector by paying researchers to do so; 

– Mobilizing with the United States to create a super lobby coalition against the European “farm to fork” strategy; 

– Promoting industrial agriculture as sustainable and promoting false solutions such as new digital technologies and deregulated new genetically modified techniques, which fit their new business model. 

In the face of these unbridled lobbying actions by the pesticide industry, which has considerable resources and is well described in the recent film Goliath, now showing in French cinemas, will the European institutions finally show independence, tackle the biodiversity crisis and move towards a more sustainable food system? This year, the European Parliament is preparing to discuss the proposed revision of the directive on the sustainable use of pesticides, which was initiated by the European Commission. 

While the European Parliament supported a binding target of a 50% reduction of pesticides, the leadership of the Agriculture Committee is joining the chorus of lobbyists who are using the war in Ukraine as an excuse to abandon the EU’s “Farm to Fork” objectives. This war in Ukraine and the looming food crisis are, however, indicative of the urgency to make food production less dependent on fossil fuels, pesticides and fertilizers. 

Numerous groups, including Justice Pesticides, have written several times to the European Commission (on February 28 and March 10) to express their concern about attempts to reduce the ecological ambitions of the agricultural policy. It is important that the revision of the directive to reflect the public’s expectations – 1.2 million people, supporting the European Citizens’ Initiative Save Bees and Farmers, are calling for an 80% reduction by 2030 and a phase-out by 2035, as well as support for farmers to make this transition – and to have a maximum level of ambition. 

Read CEO’s report: A loud lobby for a silent spring