The growing demand for sustainable agriculture in Europe is driving innovation in crop protection. Traditional chemical pesticides have served agriculture for decades, but they come with significant risks: negative impacts on soil, water, biodiversity and human health.

This weakening of conventional pest-control tools, combined with climate pressures and the ambition of the European Union to reduce environmental burdens, opens the door for bio-based alternatives.

One of the key pivots is the development of biopesticides, products derived from natural substances (plants, microbes, minerals) or engineered to mimic their action. They are meant to complement, and in some cases replace, synthetic chemical pesticides as part of Integrated Pest Management (IPM).

For instance, resilient oilseed crops such as camelina and carinata are being explored in projects like CARINA for their potential to serve as sources for novel bioactive molecules for weed and pest control. By turning such crops into dual-purpose resource streams (feedstock + bio-input), farming systems become more circular and less dependent on petro-based chemical inputs.

The EU’s policy framework echoes this shift. The “Vision for Agriculture and Food” identifies the need to accelerate access to biopesticides as a strategic priority. Regulation (EC) 1107/2009 currently governs plant-protection product approvals, but industry voices many obstacles: long approval times, high regulatory costs, and classification issues.

In response, EU institutions, industry and research partners are working to modernise the regulatory pathway, refine definitions of “biological” pest-control agents and support innovation ecosystems for sustainable inputs.

Looking ahead, the integration of bio-based pest-control tools into European agriculture has several advantages:

• Less reliance on synthetic chemical pesticides = lower ecological and health risk
• Diversified farm-input strategies = higher resilience to pest resistance and regulatory change
• Valorisation of crops like camelina and carinata into multiple value chains (oil, protein, bio-inputs) = improved farm economics and circularity

Challenges remain: scalable field-proofed solutions, cost competitiveness, regulatory clarity, and farmer adoption. But the momentum is clearly rising, combining policy ambition, agri-innovation and sustainable crop systems.

For projects like CARINA, this means placing our research at the intersection of crop diversification, bio-based inputs and circular farming. The path to zero-pollution agriculture is long, but bio-pesticides are a vital step forward.

Read more: https://croplifeeurope.eu/resources/unlocking-the-potential-of-biopesticides/