Network of Practices meeting in Berlin

At the occasion of SUPPORT’s annual meeting in January this year, the first Network of Practices (NoP) meeting was organised. In total, nine NoP members from Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Poland, Spain and Denmark were present, representing farmers and farmer organisations, extension services, policymakers, researchers and crop specialists.

In a first introductory session, the NoP members introduced themselves to the SUPPORT consortium, talking about their role and perceptions of IPM adoption, pesticide policies and crop protection. This was followed by five sessions on crop rotation, holistic impact assessment of IPM tools, preliminary policy analysis findings resulting from SUPPORT’s research activities, knowledge transfer and advice, and the impact of end-consumers on crop protection.

Some of the main points extracted from the NoP meeting’s discussions included:

• Common agreement on the fact that the ultimate goal is to move away from pesticides and that the most optimal scenario 30 years from now should be pesticide-free. However, producing zero residue-crops would be more feasible than pesticide-free.
• Consumer preferences strongly affect the adoption of IPM tools and strategies. The lack of market demand for certain crops may affect crop rotation, and the strong demand for a specific taste can affect the implementation of resistant varieties.
• Quick political changes may counteract the ability of farmers to think long-term, and thus hamper the adoption of IPM, since a long-term vision is one of the basics of IPM.
• The bureaucracy related to subsidies may pose a barrier to IPM adoption.

In view of the next NoP meeting, SUPPORT partners are now gathering feedback from NoP members on the previous event as well topics of interest for the upcoming events.