Environment-friendly pesticide is brought in the spotlight, owing to China’s serious concern over food safety and ecological construction, and the development of modern agriculture. Besides, with updated R&D technology and improved product quality, a great opportunity for bio pesticides’ development comes after years of promotion from the government and industry.
Chemical pesticides play an essential role for agricultural products’ high outputs and profits, however some of them bring pollution to the air, the soil and the water environment. And among all the chemical pesticides, highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) are the worst. Then how to ensure food security, food safety and sustainable development of agriculture without reducing the outputs and profits? Clearly, environment friendly pesticide is the answer.
In China, though the application of bio pesticide is under 10%, it has started its golden time for many reasons: food safety and ecological construction are listed as national strategy; some HHPs get banned for exceeding residues and severe food safety issue it caused; more important, bio pesticides’ registration policy has been more relaxed than the chemical ones.
Measures carried out by MOA help the application of bio pesticides. For this year, the application scope of Program on Allowance for Low Toxic Bio Pesticide reaches 13 provinces and 16 counties. And List of Low Toxic Pesticides for Crop Production (2014), in which bio pesticides account most, is printed for farmers as a guide. In some places, special fund is set by local government to deter insects from vegetables, fruits, tea trees and corns, and subsidies for bio pesticides application are distributed in water source area, ecological protection area and horticultural crop area.
ICAMA has already enacted policies on exemption of registration to promote the development of bio pesticides. Currently, ICAMA is revising the registration requirements, relaxing the standards for the testing time of pesticide effectiveness, required information on residues and environment, and required information on technical concentrate.
At present, the quantity of China’s bio pesticide enterprises is around 260, with an annual output of nearly 130,000 tons, annual value of around 500 million dollars, accounting for 9% of the pesticide industry, and application area of 0.4 billion to 0.5 billion Mu (a unit of area, 1 mu =0.0667 hectares). It’s estimated that in 10 years, the market share of China’s bio pesticide would increase to 30%.