Pesticide

The legislative texts concerning GMOs proposed by the European Commission aim to almost entirely remove the regulatory framework for GM plants and microorganisms. In addition to this deregulation, two new measures have been discreetly slipped in. The first, which is common to the pesticides dossier, would consist of authorising these products without any time limit. The second would give the European Commission full powers over future legislative changes.

In 2025, the European Union is expected to adopt a “biotech act” aimed, among other things, at modernising agriculture through new technologies. At the same time, public policies, in particular the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), are guiding farmers towards ever more expensive and sophisticated mechanisation. As a result, a “high-tech” and soil-less agricultural model is taking shape in Europe, with the risk of increasing farmers’ indebtedness and marginalising small-scale farming.

In Spain, the public agronomy institute Irta regularly carries out evaluations of several varieties of rapeseed. Recently, they introduced into their evaluation some Clearfield rapeseed varieties, herbicide tolerant varieties modified via in vitro mutagenesis. Result: these GMOs, grown commercially in Europe outside the legal framework, do not have better yields than their conventional counterparts.