Supporting UPtake Integrated Pest Management and lOw-Risk pesTicide Use

Research has shown that well-designed integrated pest management programmes (IPM) are a viable solution to reduce the dependency on use of chemical pesticides.

However, the uptake of IPM practices by farmers remains low, creating a challenge to support adoption of those techniques.

This requires thorough understanding of the decision-making process of farmers and other involved stakeholders in order to improve strategies and policies that enables and stimulates the application of IPM.

SUPPORT responds to this challenge by increasing the capacity to understand the environmental, social and economic impacts of existing and future crop protection systems in which IPM is applied, by creation of an inventory of IPM tools and techniques and the development an impact monitoring system. Farmers behave in an economic, social and institutional environment.

SUPPORT will identify barriers and opportunities in the entire agrifood-chain for the adoption of IPM and analyse qualitatively and quantitatively their role in farmer decision-making. Data will be collected by interviews, surveys, choice experiments and derived from the FADN.

The results of this analysis will be used as a basis for the development of strategies and policies enabling and supporting farmers and other stakeholders to apply IPM. The develop takes place in a co-creation process with stakeholders.

Therefore, a multi-actor approach will be the backbone of the research process. 26 National Crop Clusters (NCCs) will be used for data collection.

In 9 of those NCCs, Community of Practices (CoPs) will be developed with public and private stakeholders to co-create strategies and policies. The CoPs will be embedded in a Network of Practice (NoP), an overarching platform connecting all stakeholders.

This NoP will be used to communicate, discuss and disseminate results of SUPPORT with the entire community of stakeholders in the EU.