Copyright (c) 2010 Alison Withers

While biopesticide availability continues to lag way behind the EU and the USA UK fruit and veg growers will struggle to meet growing consumer demand for healthy, natural food.

The UK is a long way from self-sufficient in food. Between 1988 and 1993, approximately 55% of the fruit and vegetables consumed in the UK were domestically produced. Production subsequently went into decline and in 2006 fell to 33%.

According to figures from Defra in 2008 a total of 152,900 hectares of land is used for growing fruit and veg.

It breaks down into vegetables grown in the open (121,700), Orchard fruit in commercial orchards (20,800), Soft fruit including crops grown in Spanish tunnels (9,600) and Glasshouse crops of vegetables, salads and fruit (800).

On a crowded island with little room to expand growers need to make best use of the land they have.

That means increasing yield, doing everything they can to minimise loss from pests and diseases and at the same time doing it in a way that protects and sustains the land for future use.

It's estimated that there's been a 15% reduction in pesticides used in the UK in the last 10 years. However, if pesticides were not used at all as much as 50% of fruit and vegetables could be lost in transportation and storage and production costs could increase by 75% - translating into much higher food costs for consumers.

Yet as the older chemical agricultural products are increasingly being deregulated in the UK and Europe, particularly over the next 15 years thanks to new EU legislation (EU 91/414), UK producers continue to be hampered by lack of access to the full range of low-chem agricultural products.

Dr Roma L Gwynn, of the UK based organisation Rationale Biopesticide Strategists, has worked with the agriculture and horticulture industries in crop protection for more than 25 years, specialising in biopesticides since 1989. She has had exerience of a wide range of protected and broad acre crops and their associated pests and diseases.

In an interview in February 2010 she said that there are currently 279 biopesticide actives approved in the USA, 77 under EU Annex 1 listing but only 14 approved for use in the UK.

She argues that as growers continue to lose active ingredients for pest and disease control in the UK certain groups of biopesticides could be essential to the future of UK fruit.

Speedy registration is therefore crucial to growers' continued economic and environmental viability but the situation is a classic "Catch 22" because there are two significant differences in the registration processes in the USA and Europe.

While there has been a specific biopesticides registration process for 15 years in the USA, the product's effectiveness is not part of the registration process. In Europe, on the other hand, effectiveness does have to be proven as part of registration and that makes the process longer.

It also makes it more expensive and this second difference may turn out to be more crucial.

European markets are highly fragmented compared with the USA and the UK on its own is a small market so it may not be economic for research and development companies to support registration for many biopesticide products.

Unless a mechanism can be found to solve this cost issue there will continue to be fewer options for the viability of UK fruit and veg growers and for their ability to control pests and diseases.

All of which suggests that while most of us perhaps think of food security and food scarcity as issues for "third world" developing countries, with large populations living in poverty, actually they are problems that could affect us all - wherever we live.