With the main objective to pave the way for adoption of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) tools and technologies, the SUPPORT project will develop relevant and actionable knowledge to be used in co-creation design with actors of public policies and private sector strategies.

SUPPORT is a joint initiative by 20 organisations from 10 different countries, including academia and higher education, SMEs, farmer cooperative organisations and public government bodies. The project is funded under the Horizon Europe framework for a period of four years (January 2023-December 2026).

To prevent and eradicate harmful organisms and thus secure crop yields, plant protection products play an important role in managing food production. However, existing crop protection strategies rely to a large extent on the use of chemical pesticides which may carry hazardous substances that may pose risks for human health, biodiversity and for the environment.

Therefore, there is a widely felt need to reduce the use of pesticides and to reduce the dependence of agricultural producers on the use of chemical pesticides, but without reducing food production and farm economic profitability and the provision of other ecosystem services.

While well-designed integrated pest management programmes can play an important role to reduce the dependency on chemical pesticides, the uptake of IPM practices by farmers remains low. We lack knowledge about the reasons why the gap between potential and realised uptake of IPM practices exists, and which pathways can bridge this gap. 

Through a project organisation of six different workpackages, SUPPORT will investigate why adoption of IPM and low pesticide input practices is lagging behind and what could be done to address this situation.