Giovanni Missarelli represented AREFLH at the CropLife conference who celebrated on 3-4 March 2026 in Brussels its  five years of “pioneering an innovative future”.

 

This event gave an opportunity to explore upcoming changes in EU crop protection regulation, innovation pathways, and the future of product authorization.

Giovanni Missarelli as a member of AREFLH board of directors, and as of Apple APO Assomela, took part of a session on “5-year perspective – Active Substance evaluations and approvals”

He declared that we must invest on the risk mitigation approach.“We have seen increasing, year after year, the phytosanitary emergency in our orchard, with new diseases emerging and new exogenous insects. We do believe climate change has a role in that.

 

Therefore, in this global context, which is by itself already challenging, we have suffered a shrinkage of active substances available. As farmer, we need help, we cannot just be subjected of the legislation which think of the different problems but not the one that fruit growers have. While we see active substances delated, the problems remain present in our orchards.

This impacts directly :

• the income of farmers, which is not enough;
• the availability of farmers, especially for fruit growers, which do not know any more if their activity will be profitable or not;
• generational renewal, where no parents desire for their children this kind of job, which was probably the job of his/her family from generations (and this is dramatic);
• safeguarding of mountain areas, since farmers have also a social role in preserving enormous number of hectares.

We believe it is now time to change the paradigm regarding the topic of Plant Protection Products. The Food and Feed Safety Omnibus represents an important opportunity in doing a step forward to the right approach.

 

We do not want to continue to use harmful products, but we do need institutions to understand that if we want to create a better way of producing, we need first of all time, then we need investments, research, all of that together. And only when we have valuable alternatives, then we can replace the old products.”

 

Photo : ©Croplife