Pesticide

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.