What is the best policy to reduce the ‘un’sustainable use of pesticides in Portugal

Pesticides go hand in hand with modern farming. In fact, farmers face many pressures to use pesticides, but the most important reason is to avoid economic losses and maximize gains. The application of synthetic pesticides to food crops in the European Union exceeds 400,000 tonnes per year, with numerous negative health and environmental effects. The objective of this article is to explore the potential for introducing an optimal pesticide policy in Portugal. The impact of different policy strategies (regulation, subsidizing, certification), their applicability and impacts among different stakeholders are assessed to support a proposal for the most suitable policy. A pesticide policy grounded on certification processes (the current one), where consumers have the option to choose food products without pesticides, imposes the choice of using or not pesticides on the producer and excludes vulnerable segments of the population that do not have access to pesticide free food mainly for economic reasons. Pesticide policies grounded on economic incentives (subsidies) to compensate the costs of using expensive pesticide alternatives also leaves the choice to the farmer, that most times adopts an easy to use and less risky option based on pesticide use, even when having the option to receive an economic compensation. The pesticide policy grounded on taxes over pesticides, based on their toxicity (regulation), to compensate pesticide externalities, seems to be the best choice. In this case, food obtained with or without pesticides will have the same price and that will shift farmers towards more sustainable cultivation practices.

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