Despite the industry’s promise to find a substitute by the end of 2023, permission to use the neonicotinoid on sugar beet seeds has been required.
The choice, according to the Wildlife Trusts, is a “deathblow” for wildlife.
As a “necessary and proportionate measure” to combat a damaging crop virus spread by aphids, the government declared.
It further stated that the product, which has been outlawed since 2018, can only be used in March if the disease, Virus Yellows, poses an independent, scientifically-verified threat.
A 65% infection rate across the country’s sugar beet crop will be that threshold.
“Sensible utilization”
According to the NFU, the Virus Yellows disease has already resulted in up to 80% crop losses for sugar beet in recent years, endangering an industry that employs over 9,500 people.
“Relieved” that the derogation had been granted, sugar-beet farmer Michael Sly, who has land in south Lincolnshire and north Cambridgeshire and chairs the NFU’s sugar board, expressed.
If the pesticide had to be used, he said, farmers would “ensure safe and responsible use of the treatment”.
“The homegrown sugar industry is working hard to find viable, long-term solutions to this disease,” he stated.
Bees’ ability to navigate and reproduce is disrupted by neonicotinoid seed treatments, such as thiamethoxam, according to environmental and wildlife campaigners.
Authorization of its use is “a deathblow for wildlife, a backwards step in evidence-based decision making, and a betrayal of farmers who are producing food sustainably,” according to Barnaby Coupe, land use policy manager at The Wildlife Trusts.
