PLANTVALUE

The Norwegian Food Safety Authority (NFSA) has an important role in our society. Through its regulations it ensures access to healthy food and safe drinking water, and secures producers healthy plants and safety in their working environment. However, it is difficult to measure the impact of the different regulative measures of the NFSA, and particularly the value of the different consequences of the regulations, which affects environmental, social and economic aspects of our society. Moreover, one particular regulation will have different effects, and there will necessarily be trade-offs: what is positive from one point of view, can be negative from another.

In this project we use three different case studies, where each case represents a particular regulative measure: 1) Import restrictions, 2) Pesticide regulation and 3) Monitoring schemes. In the case studies we will estimate different effects of a regulative measure on the environment, on producers and the farming industry, and on consumers. In the case of import restrictions, we will estimate how regulations affect apple production through risk of disease spreading, using European canker as an example. In the case of pesticide regulation we will estimate the effect of different use of pesticides on pollinators and apple production. In the case of monitoring schemes we estimate the various economic effects of maximum levels for selected mycotoxins in cereal production. In addition we will estimate consumer valuation concerning pesticide and mycotoxin risk in food, import restrictions and the Norwegian plant health regime in general. Each case study will focus particularly on presenting and explaining different methodologies for measuring environmental, social and economic effects of the regulation in question.

The last part of the project will synthesise the results of the case studies, assess different methods for evaluating trade-offs between different effects and provide recommendations for the NFSA.

The project startet up spring 2017 with a full day seminar at NIBIO's with the participation of representatives from the NFSA, Biorationale, Gartnerhallen and NLR (Norwegian agricultural advisory service). Further on data collection has started up for WP1, and literature reviews for the other WPs.