Improved access to Agvet chemicals for agricultural industries

Summary

Australia represents only 1.5% of the global pesticide market, with considerable regulatory hurdles for product commercialization by global standards, and increasing market failure particularly driven by the increasing dominance of generic offpatent pesticides now representing >75% of the Australian market. It is becoming increasingly difficult for growers in many agricultural industries to access a large number of potential pesticide use patterns to manage crop protection risks in production. This is also an increasing issue for local government and environmental management. Australian market competitors including the USA and Canada have had access to well funded and coordinated minor use programs to improve their industries competitiveness where investment market failure is occurring, accessing improved pesticide product labels based on sound science. The project would be delivered through a partnership of Crop Protection Australia with Applied Economic Solutions. This project will review the current global prioritisation methods for existing international and Australian programs, consult with stakeholders on the benefits and failures of existing prioritisation systems and deliver preferred options for an improved framework based on case study evaluation. The project will also deliver a cross industry and government agreed definition of market failure for pesticide development to ensure that additional investment does not drive disinvestment by the commercial chemical sector. An agreed investment framework partnership of industries, RDC’s, chemical manufacturing industry partnering with the new federal governments $8 million election commitment to improved minor use programs is required to implement the outcomes of this project, but is beyond the scope of this investment.

Program

National Rural Issues

Research Organisation

Crop Protection Australia

Objective Summary

The project will deliver the following outcomes and major objectives: Identify and understand the frameworks used internationally (e.g. IR4 program in USA and the Canadian Minor Use Pesticides Program) for agricultural industries to determine priorities for chemical access and contrast this with the Australian experience (e.g. the frameworks currently used in Australia by GRDC and Horticulture Australia Limited in prioritising and understanding the value of work on chemical registration); Develop a transparent framework that could be applied across different agricultural industries (e.g. with different values, areas, numbers of enterprises) to assist in quantifying the benefits derived by an industry from access to a chemical for a particular use, and which could be used to understand the relative benefits derived by these different industries from access to different chemicals; Identify sources of information that could be used to populate the framework and work with a number of industries to undertake case studies to test the framework and methodology for a number of chemicals which they currently have access to, or for which they are seeking access; Identify the types of benefits that would be derived from an industry from the use of a particular chemical, and practical ways these benefits could be quantified; Develop measures to understand the relative level of reliance an industry may have on access to a particular chemical, for either continued operation or expansion of the industry, and how this may be compared across industries.