| Abstract: | People in The Netherlands have become more and more aware of the fact that current agricultural production practice negatively influences the environment. Therefore, the government (Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Management and Fisheries) has initiated a plan to reduce the use of chemicals drastically. This so-called Multi-Year Crop Protection Plan is aiming at the following: reduction of the use of chemicals, quantitatively as well as qualitatively (less dependence on chemical treatments); minimum release to the environment. For protected crops, this plan lays down a pesticide reduction of 50% of current use by 1995 and 65%) by 2000. The plan will be realized mainly by: use of healthy young propagating material (free from harmful organisms, beginning from the country of origin); extension of diagnostic knowledge of the growers; intensification of import inspections, followed by inspection of nurseries after import; separate cultivation of young plant material and crops for consumption; ‘closed-systems’ in glasshouses to prevent release (by keeping crops separated from the ground, probably not in artificial systems, but in soil which has been separated from the ground), and preventing the introduction of insects by using insect screens; in any case. biological control (also in ornamentals). Moreover, the Multi-Year Crop Protection Plan is a challenge to research workers, advisers, inspectors and growers to try to find, in close cooperation, practical and workable solutions. |
