The Polytechnic University of Cartagena participates in a European project that seeks to introduce sustainable solutions to the use of phytosanitary products
For many years, pesticides have been used in agriculture, generating problems such as environmental pollution, loss of biodiversity, the accumulation of their residues in crops, and certain risks to human health. This worries more and more and has generated an important sensitization by a large part of society and the sector, which now looks towards sustainable agriculture and a quality agri-food industry. Increasingly, consumers want to eat healthy food that comes from a cleaner environment. This philosophy coincides with European policies such as the Green Pact, which with the ‘From Farm to Table’ and ‘From Biodiversity’ Strategies, aim to reduce chemical pesticides by 50% in the horizon of 2030 with respect to the year 2020 and increase the cultivated area in organic production to 25%.
Josefina Contreras, researcher at the Crop Protection group of the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (UPCT) intends to “help regulators and policy makers to make well-informed decisions to introduce more sustainable solutions to the use of phytosanitary products” through the results of the SPRINT project (Sustainable Plant Protection Transition: A global health approach), “since they will have robust and updated information on the possible negative effect of their use on the environment and public health,” he says.
This is a European project, in which, since September 2020, several researchers from the School of Agronomic Engineering of the UPCT have participated, providing data on the use and accumulation of pesticides in horticultural farms in the Region, in order to evaluate the possible risks of pesticide dispersal for the health of both ecosystems and farmers and consumers. In addition, they have had the fundamental collaboration of farmers, farmers’ neighbors and users, without whom the work would have been impossible.
Propose alternatives
Specifically, the project seeks to know if there is a relationship between the accumulation of pesticides and environmental and human health, with the aim of proposing alternatives and achieving a sustainable transition in the use of pesticides. To this end, the research is focused on five more specific objectives: to know the pesticides, their residues or metabolites that accumulate the most in the environment and living beings (soil, dust, water, air, crops, insects, worms, livestock and humans); relate the presence of these pesticides to health and assess the risks and impacts they cause; you identify the agricultural practices associated with those risks and also alternative strategies; evaluate the environmental sustainability of the alternatives; and provide more sustainable solutions in agricultural practices, favoring the transition of plant protection in accordance with the European Biodiversity Strategy and from Farm to Table, so as to reduce the possible negative effects of the use of pesticides on the environment and human health, if found.
During the last few months most of the project partners have been collecting samples for laboratory analysis. “We are busy, right now, carrying out the field samplings, since we are in the middle of the broccoli campaign. Soon we will send the samples to be analyzed and we will have information on the progress of the first results ».
Some plant protection products are potentially harmful to environmental, plant, animal and human health. However, the data that exist on the risks and impacts associated with the accumulation of pesticides is currently scarce and fragmented. “SPRINT proposes, with an integrated approach, to assess the distribution and impacts of pesticide accumulation on environmental, plant, animal and human health in 11 case studies from all over Europe. In each case, a representative crop has been chosen around which sampling and analysis are carried out. ‘
Spain is, says Contreras, “the country with the highest pesticide consumption in the EU and Murcia is one of the communities with the highest national consumption. Although today the pesticides used in agriculture are less toxic and persistent than those used decades ago and the regulation is much more restrictive, it is still necessary to know the risks derived from their use in order to establish sustainable use strategies.
Within the great variety of agricultural circumstances that the project brings together, the UPCT provides a case study in the Region of Murcia with that of the cultivation of broccoli. For this, farms where broccoli is grown in a conventional and ecological way have been chosen and samples are taken to analyze soil, water, dust, insects, plant, livestock (goats) and, finally, analyzes are made to farmers , your neighbors and consumers. Subsequently, the pesticide residues they contain and a series of health indicators in humans and in the ecosystem are analyzed. In addition, farmers are asked about the agricultural practices carried out on their farm. With all the data obtained, including those from all the case studies, the aim is to create a ‘toolbox’ that evaluates the risks of pesticides on human and environmental health.
A consortium of research institutes, universities and companies from 10 European countries participate in the project together with Argentina and FAO. The researchers hope to have preliminary results by early 2022, on which to work for an ecological transition in the following years.
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