IFOAM Organics Europe and European Citizens’ Initiative condemn “fake pesticide reduction”

Methodologies are a political choice: Harmonised Risk-Indicator (HRI-1) misleads EU citizens and harms organic agriculture

BRUSSELS/VIENNA, 30 SEPTEMBER 2024 – Five months after the European Commission withdrew its proposal to halve pesticide use and risk by 2030, it released a statistic on 8 July 2024 claiming that the EU had already reduced pesticide use by 46%, nearly reaching its 50% reduction target. 

• In a webinar, the European organic movement, the European Citizens’ Initiative Save Bees and Farmers and GLOBAL 2000 (Friends of the Earth Austria) examined this data. They showed that methodologies and indicators are a political choice as this reduction is a statistical trick due to the use of a flawed measurement tool – the Harmonised Risk Indicator 1 (HRI-1). Concretely: Calculations by the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA), show that pesticide sales in the EU have stagnated during the period in which the numbers show a 46% reduction; 
• There was no decline in the use of more hazardous pesticides classified as “candidates for substitution”; 
• The European Court of Auditors has also criticised the deceptive nature of HRI-1. According to the auditors, the HRI-1 shows “a risk reduction that is mainly due to lower sales of the substances in the category ‘not approved’” and should be replaced by “better risk indicators”. 

“The citizens of Europe want to see a reduction in pesticide use. This was made clear through Eurobarometer surveys, the Conference on the Future of Europe, and our successful European Citizens’ Initiative, Save Bees and Farmers,” said Dr. Martin Dermine, spokesperson for the initiative. “It is a shame that the European Commission has abandoned its plans for pesticide reduction and is instead using a deceptive indicator to present a ‘fake reduction’ to the public, while the opposite is happening on the ground.” 

A second equally problematic aspect of HRI-1 is the systematic discrimination against natural substances such as vegetable oils, sulfur, or sodium hydrogen carbonate, which are used as alternatives to synthetic chemical pesticides – and in organic farming represent the only permissible option for “chemical” plant protection. In this context, the HRI-1 provides some grotesque results: 

“If an organic farmer treats aphids with a plant protection product based solely on rapeseed oil, the HRI-1 calculates a risk over 1,000 times higher than if a conventional farmer treats the same area with a synthetic neurotoxin that is highly toxic for bees. This not only presents dangerous substances as harmless – and vice versa, but it is also a form of misinformation about organic farming” explained Maria Zintl, Senior Policy Officer on Inputs and Organic Textiles at IFOAM Organics Europe. 

A better indicator exists 

“To offer the Commission and the Member States an alternative to replace the HRI-1, we have, as part of a collaborative project with IFOAM Organics Europe, developed an indicator that reflects the risks associated with different natural and synthetic pesticide active substances in a meaningful way and provides an assessment of trends in their use and risks of pesticides with reasonable confidence”, says Helmut Burtscher-Schaden, pesticide expert at GLOBAL 2000 and initiator of the project.  

The main strength of the indicator presented today is that it avoids the systematic disadvantage of active substances of plant or mineral origin as a result of their significantly higher application rates. Unfortunately, this discrimination against natural pesticides is a feature of many established pesticide indicators that express pesticide use in terms of the quantity of pesticide active substances sold, rather than the area that can be treated with these substances. 

The organisations are jointly calling on the Commission to immediately stop the misleading representations and disinformation about HRI-1 and to introduce an alternative indicator as soon as possible. “The indicator presented today could serve as a blueprint for this,” say IFOAM Organics Europe, Save Bees and Farmers, and GLOBAL 2000: “Amidst the biodiversity and climate crisis, our nature and the people of Europe – especially farmers – need a genuine reduction in pesticides.” 

The organisations have been pointing out the deceptive character of the HRI- 1 for the past two years in letters to and meetings with the Commission, as well as at public events (in June 2022 and October 2023) in the last two years. 

Contact details

Eva Berckmans, IFOAM Organics Europe, Communications Manager, +32 2 416 27 62, 
[email protected]  
and 
Maria Zintl, IFOAM Organics Europe, Senior Policy Officer on Inputs and Organic Textiles, 
[email protected]  
and 
Eric Gall, IFOAM Organics Europe, Deputy Director, +32 491 07 25 37, [email protected],
or visit www.organicseurope.bio 

Background information 

Videos

• Recordings of the webinar “50 % Pesticide Reduction – Mission Accomplished or Time for a Reliable Indicator?”  
• Explaining the flawed pesticides indicator 
• Organic’s approach to plant health care and pesticides regulation 

Documents 

• Policy Brief: Correcting the F2F Indicator – A prerequisite for pesticide reduction in the EU 
• Fact check: Pesticides in conventional and organic farming 
• Paper: The HRI-1 systematically overestimates the risk of natural substances used in organic farming compared to synthetic substances 
• Paper: Plant health care in organic farming – The role of natural substances in a biodiversity-based system approach 
• NGO letter: The EU must make pesticide reduction a reality 

About the organisers and speakers

PestNu

This webinar is organised in the frame of the PestNu Horizon Europe project (in which Global 2000 is a partner) that aims to revolutionise novel, digital and space-based technologies (DST) with agroecological and organic practices (AOP) in a systemic approach. These can be applied in novel circular economy food production, such as aquaponics, as well as in hydroponic greenhouses and open-field vegetable cultivation for reducing the dependence on hazardous pesticides; reducing the losses of nutrients from fertilisers, towards zero pollution of water, soil and air and ultimately fertiliser use. 

GLOBAL 2000

GLOBAL 2000 is an independent Austrian environmental organization and a member of Friends of the Earth, the largest international network of environmental organizations. GLOBAL 2000 closely monitors the development of environmental policy in Austria and is committed to ecological fairness and a future worth living both locally and around the globe.  

IFOAM Organics Europe

IFOAM Organics Europe is the European umbrella organisation for organic food and farming. With almost 200 members in 34 European countries, our work spans the entire organic food chain and beyond: from farmers and processors organisations, retailers, certifiers, consultants, traders and researchers to environmental and consumer advocacy bodies. 

Save the bees and farmers

The “Save Bees and Farmers!” European Citizens’ Initiative is a broad alliance of over 140 civil society organisations, grassroots movements, beekeepers organisations, local citizens’ initiatives, farming groups and environmental scientists. The aim of the alliance is to create an agricultural landscape in Europe which enables bees and farmers to thrive in a healthy environment for the benefit of all. The ECI “Save Bees and Farmers” was submitted to the European Commission with the support of 1,2 millions European citizens. The key demands of the ECI are: a phase out of synthetic pesticides, measures to recover biodiversity and support for farmers.