Agriculture Committee endorses agreement on agricultural input and output statistics

The Agriculture and Rural Development Committee approved an agreement with the Council on new rules for agricultural input and output statistics.

Agriculture MEPs adopted by 39 votes to 1 and 1 abstentions a provisional agreement reached with the Council on 2 June on the Statistics on agricultural input and output draft regulation (SAIO), which unifies the collection of agricultural data in the EU, including statistics on pesticide usage. The collected data will be used for assessing the progress towards the Farm to Fork and EU Biodiversity Strategy targets.

Statistics about the use of pesticides will cover active substances in all plant protection products placed on the member states’ markets as well as the crop areas treated with these products. The first data about the size of crop areas treated with pesticides will be collected in 2026 and disseminated in 2028. After that, the collection should take place on an annual basis.

Apart from data on the use of pesticides, statistics about animal and crop production, agricultural price and nutrients will be collected by the Member States according to the new rules.

Next steps

The draft regulation needs to be formally adopted by the Parliament Plenary and the Council. The regulation will enter into force 20 days after a publication in the EU Official Journal and apply from 1 January 2025.

In accompanying statements to the legislative text, the Commission, the Parliament and the Council committed themselves towards a swift adoption of an implementing regulation, which would ensure that the statistical records will be available in electronic format. The digitalisation is a precondition for a requirement defined by the SAIO regulation: the coverage of at least 95% of the pesticides use in an agricultural activity by professional users.

Background

The text replaces a number of legal acts based on which the European statistics on agricultural inputs and outputs are collected. The aim of the new legislation is to make the data collected harmonised, comparable and consistent.

O artigo foi publicado originalmente em European Parliament.