Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-03-26-Speech-3-141"
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"en.20030326.8.3-141"2
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"Mr President, we are all in favour of a reduction in the use of pesticides, but to suddenly decide upon a 50% reduction is neither realistic nor practical.
Consumers want a very good quality product. In fact, they have become accustomed to this. Very often the quality of the product is due to the amount of pesticide with which it has been sprayed. I am almost committing a sin by actually mentioning it, but many crops are sprayed and, because of this, they are of a very good quality. Consumers demand high quality, and that is what they will buy. If they do not buy a product that is produced in the European Union because we have banned various chemicals, they will buy it from outside and this will put our farmers at a disadvantage.
Farmers in the European Union also want to grow many varied types of crops. If we are not careful, we will take many chemicals off the market and this will reduce the amount of crops we can grow. This is certainly not the intention of the Commission nor of Parliament.
There is a place for organic farming, but we must accept that if the whole world was to embrace organic farming, we would starve. It is as simple as that. We would be unable to produce anywhere near enough food for the world if we were entirely on an organic system.
As one of my colleagues has mentioned, GMO agriculture would enable us to actually produce a plant which is resistant to many diseases and could be sprayed a great deal less. We could probably reduce the chemical use on these crops by even more than 50%, but, of course, we have closed our minds and our ears to the whole debate and, again, we are going to reduce the competitivity of European agriculture. We have to face up to the realities of the global market."@en1
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