Coffee up 332%, citrus up 82%: EU pesticide plan could sharply raise food prices

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Fancy a morning coffee, orange juice or blueberry pancakes for your Sunday brunch? Prepare to fork out more for those items if Brussels’ plan to get foreign growers to align with the bloc’s pesticide rules holds.

An analysis by the European Commission’s in-house researchers confirms what non-EU farmers have been saying for months: A plan to prohibit any trace of some of the “most hazardous” pesticides banned in the EU for health and environmental reasons would lead to fewer and more expensive products.

Under a worst-case, hypothetical scenario — in which the non-EU producers don’t adjust to the rules — you’d have to pay 332 percent more for coffee and 82 percent more for citrus fruit, the Joint Research Centre said in an analysis published on Tuesday . The EU’s agricultural imports would decline by 41 percent and livestock farmers would also be hit with higher feed costs.

Even under more plausible scenarios envisioned by the researchers, in which external growers get on board to varying degrees, consumer prices would rise and EU agricultural imports decline. Though that would in turn boost domestic production, with exact numbers depending on producers’ willingness to adapt.

The findings lay out an unpalatable political choice for Brussels: Keep angry farmers’ tractors off the streets, or hit consumers’ wallets as they fulfill basic needs at the grocery store.

The proposed residue ban, which is part of the food and feed safety simplification package, is popular with European farmers seeking a level playing field with foreign growers — after all, it was partly designed to appease their ire over the EU’s trade deal with the Mercosur bloc of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. In order to avoid leaving any residue on fruits and vegetables, producers would essentially have to stop using the substance in question.

However, critics say it clashes with global trade rules , as it essentially imposes EU rules on foreign producers, which is known as a mirror clause.

A wide range of international producer groups argue that the proposed ban goes beyond existing health protections in order to push a one-size-fits-all approach, ignoring the reality that growers around the world face different pests, climates and farming conditions.

“The choice is between berries that are available all year round — healthy, safe and at a fair price — or limited production at a high price,” said Amine Bennani, president of the Moroccan Association of Red Fruit Producers.

What Brussels calls an “alignment of standards,” he said in an emailed statement , amounts in practice to “a trade barrier.” Bennani also complained that the association has never been consulted, even though the legislation will affect 250,000 Moroccans working in the sector.

The concerns are not unique to Moroccan berry growers. South African fruit farmer association Hortgro and the South African Table Grape Industry argued that country’s grape exports are critical to livelihoods of thousands of people working in the sector.

Similar points were also raised by other producers, including the Canadian grains and pulse sector , Honduran melon agro-export sector , Brazilian livestock and agriculture union and California’s almond sector .

The Commission said its aim is to prevent the most hazardous substances — banned for use in the bloc — from re-entering the EU through imports altogether by lowering their residue limits to a technical zero.

Both the Commission and the global producers agree on one point: Residue limits are already set to ensure safe levels of consumption for human health. Critics argue, though, that the EU executive wants to go well beyond existing safeguards for human health as it looks to block traces of substances banned for broader health and environmental threats.

Europe’s “very high standards” for safety “need to be adequately controlled,” said Elisabeth Werner, director-general of DG AGRI, at the POLITICO Sustainable Futures Summit just ahead of the proposal’s debut last year.

Adding further uncertainty for growers, the Commission has yet to specify which banned pesticides would be covered by the measure. The JRC study identified 18 active substances that could be subject to the residue ban, affecting 235 commodities and 86 countries.

The EU will make those decisions case-by-case, using impact assessments, said Commission spokesperson Eva Hrnčířová.

In an emailed statement, Hrnčířová did not directly address concerns about higher prices or reduced availability. Yet she stressed that any action “would take into account the importance of preserving the EU’s food security and possible international implications.”

The EU has reason to be concerned about international implications. Several countries, including Australia, Canada, Paraguay and the U.S., have challenged the measure at the World Trade Organization level, while the International Fresh Produce Association argues that existing global food safety standards already protect consumers while facilitating trade.

Some EU countries support mirror clauses as a way to be more fair to European farmers, who fear free trade deals like Mercosur allow competition from abroad that isn’t subject to the same restrictions. Paris has been especially vocal, already imposing national-level bans earlier this year on products with residual levels of some pesticides whose use is forbidden in the EU — restricting some potatoes and avocados from entering the country. So much for avocado toast.