Limited pesticide use necessary in this case

I’M afraid some of Tim Foster’s remarks in the last issue of West Country Life magazine (February 6th) regarding the use of pesticides, in particular the emergency application made for the use of neonicotinoids, were somewhat wide of the mark.

Any treatment will be used only in a limited and controlled way, only on sugar beet, a non-flowering crop of little interest to bees, and only when the scientific threshold for its use (based on predicted aphid numbers) has been independently judged to have been met.

Tim implies that the application was kept secret, but this is not the case. It was widely reported in the agricultural press when it was made.

Thirteen other European countries, including France, are permitting the use of neonicotinoids on sugar beet this year, so he is also mistaken in his assumption that the situation is anything to do with Brexit. The application was made because of a disease called virus yellows, which caused considerable problems for sugar beet growers last year, with yield drops of up to 80%. This threatens the viability of an industry which supplies about half the sugar we use. Would Tim rather that we relied on sugar cane or beet imported from countries which have no qualms about using chemicals? Or that is transported thousands of miles, creating a huge carbon footprint? UK growers are a maximum of 28 miles from a factory.

Unfortunately, they currently have no other way of controlling the aphids that cause virus yellows and there is no cure once a crop is infected – though research into the disease continues. Despite the large picture of a tractor spraying fields which appeared at the top of the article, neither the product used on sugar beet – which is a seed treatment – or the metaldehyde pellets he also mentions are sprayed.

As sugar beet is only grown in the east of the country I can, in any case, assure readers that not a single drop of neonicotinoid will be used in the South West.