The finding comes from an Eurostat ranking in which France, Spain and Germany also feature in the top four positions. The study further reveals that fungicides are the best-selling pesticides.
Italy ranks third in the European Union for pesticide sales in 2016. This is the finding of a ranking compiled by Eurostat analysing available data from 20 EU member states to obtain an indicator of pesticide use in agriculture.
Our country came in third place with almost sixty million kilograms of pesticides sold, behind Spain and France and ahead of Germany: these four countries alone account for 79 per cent of total pesticides sold, but they are also the EU's main agricultural producers, as they collectively hold 46 per cent of the total utilised agricultural area and 47 per cent of total arable land. The ranking continues with Romania, Portugal, Hungary, Belgium, Greece, Finland, Austria, Ireland, Denmark, Slovakia, Croatia, Latvia, Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta. Which are the best-selling pesticides? Fungicides and bactericides (46 per cent), followed by herbicides (29 per cent) and insecticides and acaricides (11 per cent).
In recent days, the Greens Group (Greens/EFA) presented to the European Parliament a study in which the French laboratory Ires analysed 148 hair samples collected between June and October in six EU countries: Germany, Denmark, the United Kingdom (Wales), Italy, France and Belgium, testing for 30 different types of pesticides. The greatest number of samples with the highest concentration of pesticide residues (84.6 per cent of 13 people) was found in Wales (United Kingdom), and the lowest in Germany (44 per cent from a sample of 34 people). With regard to Italy, residues were found in more than 66 per cent of the 24 samples analysed. Among the most prevalent substances is fipronil (45 per cent of samples), whose use in agriculture has been banned since 2017 but which is still used as a pesticide for domestic animals, followed by Permethrin, Propiconazole and Chlorpyrifos Ethyl, a hazardous insecticide.
Another recent and noteworthy study on pesticides is that conducted by the departments of Agri-food Science and Technology and of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Bologna, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, which examines the effects of pesticides on solitary bees. The study highlights how combined exposure to multiple pesticides is one of the main causes of bee die-offs. A single meal consisting of a pesticide cocktail — a neonicotinoid insecticide and a fungicide — reduces the bee's longevity but also delays ovary development, thereby diminishing its reproductive capacity.
