It looks really good until the loopholes: "Pesticide use kept to a minimum in parks,etc."
And "Air spraying will be banned unless given exceptional approval by safety authorities.". The old adage is true, "the devil is in the details"..

It is any surprise that the epicenter of Euro-scepticism, the UK, is trying resist common sense EU regulation on pesticides. When is the opt-out going to happen?

www.wunderman-comics.com

"Scores of pesticides suspected of causing cancer"

- but none proven.

Just another way to scare us into buying super-expensive organic produce.

joehope: The scare tactics come from the pesticide peddlers who claim we would starve without the "benefits" of agri-chemicals. Search the web for organic farming in Cuba. Cuba quit "modern agriculture" cold turkey when the USSR broke up and stopped sending their synthetic ag inputs to Cuba (and stopped stealing the products of the Cuban farms). The Cubans have done just fine growing most of their fresh produce in backyard and urban gardens. They've developed very effective natural products and methods to attain better production than most farmers anywhere in the world.

This ban could be the best thing that's happend to the British people in centuries. I only wish the U.S.A. would take such a stand.

Yes, NYCartist, I suppose every loophole will be exploited, but perhaps a step in the right direction.

Imagine walking into your local ag store and finding the option of locally produced soil additives (compost) along with companion plantings, lunar calendar to maximize germination, microbial dynamics introduced, soil and insect ecology, etc. Why is the marketplace devoid of alternatives? Because the $ use of accumulated resources sequester market share by design. Monoculture begets demand for monoculture...

In an ethnobotanical paper there was a narrative of conversation between a forest deweller and researcher out one night observing the stars. The former notes the ease of observation on moonless nights. The researcher, from western perspective notes the absence of lunar illumination obfuscating the starlight. The former returns... no its the absence of the mosquitos. Fewer mosquitos on a moonless night.

Monoculture begets monoculture of perspective and inquiry.

The bottle that holds your water or pop is bad for you. Lots of natural foods contain naturally occurring toxins that are bad for you. If you look at most anything carefully enough, you will find danger. Try to keep a perspective of avoiding the worst and moderation in everything.

Remember, ladies, ladies of either gender if you're full of estrogen mimics, always look for the "CE", "Council of Europe" symbol on the package. It insures that your product is chemically much safer than anything regulated by the USA's FTC. The same Chinese factories now turn out safe products for Europe and dung for the US market.

When American manufacturers finally get upset that no one is buying their dung because it's not regulated, they'll finally request an FTC with some teeth.

I remember the language used when Stephen Harper announced he would LOWER the Standards for Fruits and vegetables consumed inside of Canada when it came to the amount of residue from pesticides and herbicides.

They were at one time much stricter then that in the United States and mexico.

He claimed that under NAFTA it became necessary to "harmonize" the standards and that having standards not in "Harmony" were detrimental to the creation of wealth.

Harmonize thus becomes a very dirty word. The Wealth of the few always outweighs the health of the many.

This is Capitalism. There is no money to be made when people eat foods that are good for them.

this planet is a production system of molecules interacting and intra-morphing, actually moving from organism to environment to organism...altering this system chemically with no ability to test for outcome, and no motivating desired state other than the profitability of monopoly, is insane...we have no backup planet to go to...we are taking what was a virginal, working system, complex far beyond our comprehension, upon which we are utterly dependent, and just plain breaking it with our brainless application of our primitive chemistry until it will no longer be able to function as a working system...the failure of any single, key component, of which this ecosystem has many, will have repercussions throughout...

Sorry. Happy Holidays.

Could the speed of 'phase out' not equal the speed of 'phase in'?

"The agrochemical industry has bitterly resisted them, backed by the Prime Minister, who has voiced his concern that they would damage agriculture and food production without significantly benefiting health or the environment."

I just wonder who they are fooling besides themselves. The article represents a notion of recognising the truths that are out there. Those truths could destroy many huge corporations and cost billions of dollars in cleanup for the messes they have made from allways taking short cuts. I wish we would just act on the knowledge that we have now instead of waiting for it to be "proven". Remember folks, its not "Whinney the Pooh" that floats down stream, its "SH1T"! "Consumerism" is just a fancy word for "rape and pillage" which is the cheapest short cut of all. It even cheats you of all it could be worth.

"to the soundest depths of your profession" Aristotle

Joe, joehope, I guess, is referred to in another post in this page, a post by someone referring to him saying or inferring organically grown produce is more expensive, and if that's what joehope said or inferred, then it's in part right, and in part wrong. Organically grown produce was higher during the early 1990s, but that's when there weren't enough consumers, so there weren't enough sales, hence revenues, which are used to cover costs of production and transportation or shipping, i.e., distribution. Once the consumer market began to significantly grow, then prices of the produce considerably adjusted, downward.

That's an acceptable explanation for farms that aren't small and which distribute over considerable distances, but when small farms produce organically and sell only or mainly locally, then the prices of the produce can certainly be kept very competitive with non-organically grown or related produce, crops and other produce, like cheese, milk, etcetera.

From what I once read, it really does not cost more to conduct agriculture organically, than or versus non-organically. F.e., the organic farmer doesn't have the costs of synthetic chemicals for fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, so the money saved from not paying for these things is or certainly should be used for other things; f.e., purchasing companion crops, beneficial predatory insects, and healthy manures when manure is needed, besides compost being used.

Best is for small and medium-sized farms, for with this scoping, distribution distances can be kept, on average, much lower, and more small and medium-sized farms will get to be promoted everywhere, which'd be good for all local and regional economies. The chain of benefits is not short and narrow, but full or complete. And with smaller farms, there can be more small farmers, so people in business operating their own farms, and costs are additionally reduced by the lack of need for larger farmer machinery.

Little machinery's needed for a small organic, or environmentally sustainable farm, for these can be easily worked with horses, instead of machines; the only farm vehicle being needed is the van or truck for taking produce to market, sales outlets.

Organic crop seeds can surely be expensive, but a good farmer would pay only one year per different type of crop grown and to be re-grown, for those to be re-grown could be re-sown using seeds from the prior season's harvest(s).

Just some ideas off of the top of my head for explaining why I don't buy into the notion or claim that organically grown produce, so organic farming, needs to be more expensive.

Our ancestors [never] needed synthetic chemicals for fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, and neither do we have any [need] for this crap.

Re. a post made by someone referring to the Canadian PM Stephen Harper, him again doing wrong, this time with respect to agriculture and the health of Canadians and residents of Canada, well, it's not surprising. The Canadian govt has long been much against the health of people here; we see a definite example of this in the national law banning access to raw milk, f.e. Raw milk, which is what my mother and her 9 siblings, my father and his 11 siblings, their parents, and so on going back in history, in additional to having had raw milk from dairies of relatives of mine in southeastern Quebec numerous times during childhood and teen years, well, raw milk is [good] for us. NONE of us ever had any health problems due to raw milk; only I gained weight quickly, so had to moderate consumption, given raw is richer in fat, too.

There is absolutely no justifiable reason to ban raw milk, but it's banned all across Ca under or through one national law. It only benefits, i.e., profits, the big agri. business cies; definitely being no benefit to consumers.

It's apparently believed to be the or one of the main reasons for why youth are developing many allergies today compared to decades or many decades past and further back. By forcing people to consume pasteurized milk, our immune systems, especially for little children, don't have the bacteria, etc., needed for immunity to develop.

"Politics is full of hypocrisy", thus, "politics is The Peoples' enemy"! Yes, I said "Peoples'", not "People's", for there are many peoples, and politics happens to be enemy of ... most of us.