The role of public consultations in decision-making on future agricultural pesticide use: insights from European Union’s Farm to Fork Strategy public consultation

Figures & data

Table 1. Framing for critical discourse analysis.

Questions for deliberative approaches (Fishkin, 2011)	Framing for critical discourse analysis
How inclusive is it?	Who participated in the consultation?
How thoughtful are submissions?	What did they say in their submissions? How have they constructed their messages? Are submissions detailed and deliberate? Do they refer to evidence? Do they engage with the complexities of the issue? Do they present a clear logical narrative?
What effects does this have?	Are there clear power imbalances? Are the submissions polarised? Is there evidence of groupthink?
Under what social and political conditions can inclusive and thoughtful public consultations be achieved?	To what extent is public consultation, as a non-deliberative approach, able to represent views in a democratic way?

Table 2. Explanation of how coding was conducted.

Organising question	Fishkin’s questions addressed	Explanation	Constructs explored
Who	How inclusive?	Who participated in the public consultation (table 1)	Over-representation of certain ‘political’ actors; power imbalances
What	How thoughtful are submissions?	Overall view towards pesticide use	Liberal (tokenistic) approach to democracy
Why	How thoughtful are submissions? What effect do they have?	Reasons given for holding a particular view surrounding pesticide use; for example, to support planetary and human health	Incremental vs transformative suggestions; power imbalances; liberal (tokenistic) approach to democracy
How	How thoughtful are submissions? What effect do they have?	Suggestions surrounding what should happen in terms of pesticide use going forward; for example, through regulations	Incremental vs transformative suggestions; power imbalances; liberal (tokenistic) approach to democracy

Table 3. Approximate clustering of the participants who submitted responses the F2F public consultation with explicit reference to pesticides.

Cluster	Name of cluster	Description	Examples of participants	Number of submissions
1	Environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs)	Environmental charities	BirdLife, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Zero Waste Europe	46
2	‘Other’ NGOs	Charities with primary focus on human health and other ‘non-environmental’ concerns	Animal Task Force, Beyond GM, EurEau,	60
3	Research	Academic researchers, ThinkTanks and other evidence-led entities	FiBL, Institute for Environmental Policy	16
4	Agri-Industry/Business	Industry, Agrichemical businesses, biocontrol businesses, retail	Europatat, Bayer Crop Science, Biocontrol Switzerland, BASF, CropLife	109
5	Farmers	Individual farmers and farming unions	British Agriculture Bureau, IFOAM, International Confederation of Beet Growers	31
6	Public	Citizens	General public	35

Table 4. Reasons shared for having unfavourable views towards pesticide use. These themes are not mutually exclusive, with submissions providing several reasons. Green = mentioned >5 times, orange = mentioned <5 times.

Reasons for arguing in favour of reducing pesticide use		NGOs	Research
Human health		14	1
Planetary health	Aquatic environment	14	0
	Biodiversity	14	0
	Pollinators	14	0
	Planetary health (total)	26	0
Food security		4	0
Global justice & fighting corporate profiteering		3	0

Table 5. Reasons given for not further restricting pesticide use. Green = mentioned >5 times, orange = mentioned <5 times.

Reasons for not further restricting use of pesticides	Business/Industry	Farmers	All NGOs*
Food security	34	17	2
Viable alternatives are needed first	11	3	0
Costs and competitiveness	8	3	0
Planetary health	9	0	0
Science = pro-pesticide	1	0	0
Reductions should happen elsewhere	0	1	0
Tillage issue	0	1	0
Impact on developing country producers	1	0	2

* = combined as the single document set did not result in enough data to conduct code maps.

Figure 1. Schematic illustration of simplified themes identified during code mapping. Links between themes are illustrated with arrows. Dark blue arrows represent the extent to which those in support of pesticide use referred to multiple themes within their submissions. Green arrows illustrate the same for submissions that gave reasons for reducing pesticide use. Arrow thickness illustrates how frequently these connections existed within submissions.

Table 6. Pesticide reduction options according to the participants who broadly supported the continued pesticide use. Green = mentioned >5 times, orange = mentioned <5 times.

Suggestions by pro-pesticide actors	Business / Industry	Farmers	Retail	Research
Policies	19	9
Innovation	16	4
Genomics/plant breeding	15	9	1	1
Biocontrol/biostimulants	13
Science (not policy) based decisions	9	1
Increased monitoring/risk assessments	9	1
Research	8	10	1
IPM	7	2	1
Financial incentives	4
Demand side	2
Digital technology	1	1		1

Table 7. An overview of themes for ‘how’ pesticide reliance could be reduced in responses broadly arguing for the need to reduce pesticide use. Green = frequently mentioned ( =  or >5 times), orange = infrequently mentioned (<5), blank = not mentioned.

Mechanism for reducing pesticide reliance	Environmental NGOs	‘Other’ NGOs	Research	Industry/Business	Farmers
Government levers	41	24		7	6
Organic agriculture/agroecology	42	16		1
Risk assessments/monitoring	15	3	2	2	4
Policy coherence	15	29		1	1
Need for ‘Non-pesticide areas’	15
Research	2	2	1
Supporting farmers	8	5
Alternatives	1			1
Use of IPM	1			1	5

Figure 2. Schematic diagram illustrating the major code groupings identified during MAXQDA analysis concerning how pesticide use could be reduced. The dark blue box shows narratives used by participants who clearly favoured a reduction in pesticide reliance, whilst light blue boxes represent those against further restrictions on pesticide use. The arrows represent connections between narrative groupings – again, dark blue arrows refer to submissions that broadly supported a reduction in pesticide reliance, whilst light blue arrows refer to those who argue against further restrictions. Thicker arrows reflect more frequent connections.

Figure 3. Schematic illustration of how public consultations are inadequate due to the risk of over-representing certain actors and a lack of deliberation.

Fishkin, J. S. (2011). Making deliberative democracy practical. Chapter 4. In When the people speak: Deliberative democracy and public consultation (pp. 95–105).

 Google Scholar