Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department has taken to support farmers to move away from using pesticides and towards integrated pest management.

Integrated Pest Management lies at the heart of our approach to minimise the environmental impact of pesticides and is a key tool for businesses facing the challenges of pesticide resistance, removal of pesticides from the market, and changing pest pressures due to climate change. All professional users of pesticides are encouraged to follow the principles of IPM. This is supported through formal training requirements, guidance, conditions of pesticide use and industry assurance schemes.

We are working to increase the availability of tools to support the use of IPM. We recently commissioned a package of research projects that will bring together scientific evidence underpinning IPM and to look at ways of further encouraging its uptake. This work will support farmers’ access to the most effective IPM tools available and ensure that we understand changing trends in pest threats across the UK.