Reconsidering EU Pesticide Policy to Address Sustainability

Francesco Zecca and Livia Romani

Economia agro-alimentare, 2025, vol. 2025/2, issue 2, 225-245

Abstract: In January 2024, widespread farmer protests across Europe exposed growing tensions between the socioeconomic realities of agricultural production and environmental policy ambitions. Among the most contested issues, pesticide use emerged as a critical friction point, symbolizing broader dilemmas at the intersection of environmental sustainability, food security, and farmers? livelihoods. In response, the European Commission launched the Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture, a participatory platform aimed at fostering consensus among diverse stakeholders and redefining the direction of EU agricultural policy. This paper explores the Strategic Dialogue?s contribution to shaping EU pesticide policy through a qualitative content analysis of its final report, triangulated with official stakeholder statements and EU policy documents. Focusing on the discourse on pesticide reliance reduction, sustainability trade-offs, and policy implementation challenges, the analysis applies a deductive-inductive coding framework to investigate the Dialogue?s effectiveness in promoting deliberative governance and how the competing priorities were negotiated within the participatory process. The findings indicate broad stakeholder support for synthetic pesticide use reduction and restoring ecological balance, alongside recognition of the knowledgebased, structural, and economic barriers that hinder the transition. The report advocates a phased reduction strategy, supported by targeted financial support for small-scale farms and an increased investment in sustainable alternatives such as biocontrol and Integrated Pest Management. Furthermore, the analysis underscores the importance of ensuring balanced stakeholder representation and addressing power asymmetries in participatory policymaking. The paper contributes to understanding the potential of the Strategic Dialogue?s initiative to generate cooperative responses to complex agrienvironmental challenges by situating pesticide policy within the wider framework of deliberative sustainability governance.

Keywords: Pesticide use; farmers; agricultural policy; environmental policy; Sustainability governance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista. ... 362&Tipo=ArticoloPDF (text/html)
Single articles can be downloaded buying download credits, for info: https://www.francoangeli.it/DownloadCredit

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fan:ecaqec:v:html10.3280/ecag2025oa18762

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.francoang ... o.aspx?IDRivista=214

Access Statistics for this article

Economia agro-alimentare is currently edited by FrancoAngeli

More articles in Economia agro-alimentare from FrancoAngeli Editore
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Stefania Rosato ().