PHOTO: FILE
MADRID:
A Spanish rice variety traditionally used to make paella is under threat from a fungus after the European Union banned a pesticide farmers said they relied upon, in another example of how the bloc’s environmental rules are angering growers.
Three rice producers in the Valencia region said their harvest of arroz bomba, or bomb rice, a variety grown almost exclusively in Spain, was half the 10-year average in 2023 as a result of the Pyricularia fungus which causes rice blast disease.
Bomba rice “is very likely to disappear,” said Miguel Minguet, a rice farmer in the Albufera Natural Park in Valencia. “Our crop is going to be lost to regulations.”
Meanwhile, major exporters such as Brazil, India and Cambodia are widely using the pesticide to protect their own crops.
Farmers across Europe have staged angry protests against the EU over restrictions they say hand an advantage to outside competitors. Spanish farmers have been protesting across the country this week.
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Poisonous harvest : Pesticide overuse threatens bird speciesThe clashes are exposing the EU’s struggle to reconcile its sustainability drive with its aim of becoming more self-sufficient in food production amid disrupted supply chains.
The European Commission has been forced to backpedal, with President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday proposing the withdrawal of the EU’s plan to halve the use of pesticides.
The EU in 2018 stopped authorising tricyclazole because it ruled it could be harmful to human health
It had been relied upon for 40 years to combat the fungus affecting bomba rice in Spain’s wetlands, the farmers said.
What angers farmers perhaps the most is that the EU still allows imports to have small traces of the fungicide.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 9th, 2024.
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