The more we spray, the fewer insects are allowed to thrive.

There is also that bird populations are affected by pesticide use, and there are still cases of acute poisoning of birds, mammals and amphibians directly linked to pesticide usage.

However, we have a very large, expensive and complex risk-assessment process to ensure safety. So what is going wrong?

My colleagues in Switzerland and France, and myself from the Department of Bioscience at Aarhus University have tried to answer this question in a new article in Science.

The basic approach to environmental risk assessment (ERA) is 30 years old. It was designed when our ecological understanding was very different from today.

…

Instead of a black/white safe or unsafe classification, as is the case now, we would be able to determine an allowable volume of each group of pesticides tailored to the landscape in which they would be used.

It would be a much more dynamic situation, since monitoring could show that we should change the pesticide volume. Climate, agronomic or landscape changes may also change the capacity of the environment to withstand harm, also necessitating adjustment of the pesticide use.

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here.