Beyond “greening”: which paradigms shape sustainable pest management strategies in the European Union?

Abstract

Various strategies exist to manage agriculture pests with few or without conventional pesticides. Farmers can rely on ecosystem services delivered by agro-biodiversity or use biotechnologies and biological plant protection products (PPP). Integrated Pest Management (IPM) has developed as an approach that combines these tools. The adoption of IPM has been supported by the European Union (EU) in the recent years. In parallel, EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has strengthened its agri-environmental incentives to further protect biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. These evolutions have been presented as the “greening” of the CAP. We argue that this “greening” aims at strengthening agricultural competitiveness while preserving biodiversity. Hence, we suggest that the EU policy is entrenched in a green productivism paradigm, which objective is to produce more with less to achieve green growth within capitalism. Nonetheless, this worldview does not content all European farmers. We explain that those who reject productivism treasure a sufficiency paradigm by refusing the use of biotechnologies and biological PPP to consolidate their autonomy, especially regarding markets. By producing enough, and not more with less, they achieve complementary objectives, notably meeting their consumers’ expectations and perpetuating their productive resources. We based our arguments on discussions with farmers, participation to various meetings between 2013 and 2017 where these issues were debated, and the analyses of the EU policies, scientific studies, as well as the farmer unions’ and the companies’ publications.