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![The UK has finally published its national action plan on pesticides. Farmers will be supported to “voluntarily increase their use of nature friendly farming techniques and embrace alternative measures to reduce the potential harm from pesticides by 10% by 2030, while controlling pests and pesticide resistance effectively,” said all four UK Governments in a statement last month.
NGOs I spoke to were not impressed. The 38 pages amount to little better than a “poke in the eye”, suggested Nick Mole, policy manager at Pesticide Action Network (PAN) UK, the campaigning group that has been tracking pesticide policies for years. “We are not keeping up [with Europe],” he added.
So, what is the UK’s plan for pesticides and how does it compare with the EU’s?
Talk of pesticides often has me turning to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring to reflect and revise. But the publication of the UK’s long-delayed national action plan on pesticides had me reaching first for another book: The Dirty Man of Europe, by Chris Rose.
As the detailed account of the ecological misrule of Britain in the 1980s notes: “The UK has a sordid record of deliberate attempts to disguise pollution,” including the evasion or neutering of European laws.
Without pressure from Europe, it is difficult to see how the country would have made any environmental progress in that period – or until 31 January 2020.
Brexit had me – and many others – wondering whether we would really be ‘greener’ (as promised by the government at the time) once freed from the slow yet steady regulatory wheels of Brussels. Would we really go further and faster to clean up our countryside? Or would we shift into reverse?
Five years on from the divorce and almost nine from the referendum vote and you could probably say there has been a bit of both. But the lack of progress on pesticides has increased concerns over divergence from EU environment laws and had many looking longingly at the Brussels bureaucrats as they continue to ban harmful chemicals.
Read the full feature on Wicked Leeks, as David Burrows digs into the new UK pesticide action plan, via the 🔗 in our bio.](https://wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)