An innovative LIFE Environment project has created a critical mass of expertise in point source pollution from European plant protection products and resulted in new Best Management Practices guidelines on the topic, which have been widely promoted across the EU's agricultural sector.

Europe's farmers use a vast array of different agro-chemicals to protect their products from pests, weeds and diseases. Many of these Plant Protection Products (PPSs) are applied by use of spraying systems and the process can lead to unintended negative impacts as PPPs leach or run-off into ground and surface waters.

PPPs enter the environment by two main routes. Firstly through diffusion linked with adverse weather or ground conditions. Diffusion sources can include spray displacements via wind or soil erosion following heavy rain. The second, and more common, source of PPP pollution is from ‘point sources'. These refer to spillages associated with handling PPPs before or after spraying and occur during transportation, storage, filling and cleaning of spray equipment.

Pollution caused by PPPs can create significant environmental problems, such as wildlife mortality and alterations to the equilibriums of sensitive ecosystems. These problems have been acknowledged by LIFE Environment beneficiaries from Belgium who have been coordinating an EU-wide initiative to help reduce PPP point source pollution.
LIFE approach

Led by ECPA, a Brussels-based trade organisation representing crop-protection companies and associations in 24 countries, the LIFE TOPPS project has successfully developed common European Best Management Practices (BMP) guidelines and promoted these principals through advice, training, and demonstration events.

LIFE provided €1 259 000 of co-finance over a three year period which supported research and pilot work in four regional clusters covering 15 Member States. Research results led to agreed standards for mitigating PPP pollution from point sources across the full range of agricultural processes. These were integrated within the European BMP, which was translated into 12 languages, and the guidelines have now been formally adopted by Member States consuming large PPP volumes, such as Poland.

BMP research was carried out on 11 demonstration farms where good practice methods, hardware and infrastructure were both tested and promoted to the agricultural sector. Training, provided to 4 100 farmers and 1 500 advisors, about PPP management methods was well received and instruction brochures were provided to participants in order to strengthen and sustain the knowledge transfer process. 285 000 brochures were disseminated (in 15 languages) featuring vital topics, such as cleaning and bio-purification techniques. An image library was also created which proved highly beneficial as a dissemination tool, because its 500 pictures showing good and bad examples of PPP handling were easy to understand and required no translations.

Other outputs included some 400 TOPPS articles that were produced by the LIFE project and these were used to disseminate information, via the media, to an estimated 10 million professional users (comprising 80% of key EU stakeholders and intermediaries). The project's overall research inputs involved around 300 different experts and these now provide the basis for a new EU network of coordinated knowledge on PPP point source pollution at the European level.
Policy contributions

TOPPs' considerable set of outputs and outcomes make important contributions to existing and future EU policy frameworks encompassing the Water Framework and Groundwater Directives, the Thematic Strategy on Sustainable Pesticide Use, and Common Agricultural Policy priorities.

See the TOPPS website for more information on all the LIFE project's results and contributions.