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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Pesticides go hand in hand with modern farming. In fact, farmers face many pressures to use
pesticides, but the most important reason is to avoid economic losses and maximize gains. The
application of synthetic pesticides to food crops in the European Union exceeds 400,000 tonnes per
year, with numerous negative health and environmental effects.
The objective of this article is to explore the potential for introducing an optimal pesticide policy in
Portugal. The impact of different policy strategies (regulation, subsidizing, certification), their
applicability and impacts among different stakeholders are assessed to support a proposal for the
most suitable policy.
A pesticide policy grounded on certification processes (the current one), where consumers have the
option to choose food products without pesticides, imposes the choice of using or not pesticides on
the producer and excludes vulnerable segments of the population that do not have access to
pesticide free food mainly for economic reasons. Pesticide policies grounded on economic incentives
(subsidies) to compensate the costs of using expensive pesticide alternatives also leaves the choice
to the farmer, that most times adopts an easy to use and less risky option based on pesticide use,
even when having the option to receive an economic compensation. The pesticide policy grounded
on taxes over pesticides, based on their toxicity (regulation), to compensate pesticide externalities,
seems to be the best choice. In this case, food obtained with or without pesticides will have the same
price and that will shift farmers towards more sustainable cultivation practices.
Description
Keywords
Taxes Sustainable farming Certification Subsidizing Pesticide use
Citation
Costa CA, Santos JML (2021). What is the best policy to reduce the ‘un’sustainable use of pesticides in Portugal. Public Policy Portuguese Journal, 6(2), 209-230.