Most modern farmers use 21st Century tools, and one area where new technology is essential is in the control of pests and diseases of crops.

As climate change and global trade have increased the spread and impact of pests and diseases, many argue that the challenge of keeping pace is being made even harder by a general lack of understanding of the importance of plant protection products (PPP) - pesticides, fungicides, herbicides etc - amongst the general public, civil servants and politicians.

Around for decades, PPP have at times been a source of controversy. Their use has long been regulated, and while they occasionally find their way into the public water supply via diffuse pollution, they have never been found at levels remotely close to being damaging to human health.

Despite their critically important role in maintaining productivity in the face of mounting challenges, and thereby slowing down food price inflation, PPP are a lightning rod for criticism.

In the past these substances were poorly regulated, but they are now very highly regulated throughout the EU.

Indeed, many argue that EU regulation is now so excessive that it is choking off development of new PPP and thereby risking the continued productivity of our farms - with knock-on impacts on food prices and food security.

At the heart of PPP lie the active ingredients - the substances that inhibit or kill off the pest or disease and give the plant a chance to flourish.

Before any new active ingredient is allowed to be released onto the market as a constituent part of a PPP, it is subject to years of laboratory and field tests (costing on average in excess of £150 million per active ingredient) that yields vast amounts of data which is in turn analysed to assess potential risks.

While the active ingredients are intrinsically hazardous (they wouldn't be much good at killing pests and diseases if they weren't) they are used in such low concentrations and in such controlled ways that the risk is extremely low.

That didn't stop the EU introducing hazard-based regulation in 2009 to replace risk-based regulation. The effect of this has been a massive withdrawal of existing PPP from the EU, and a halving of the number of new active ingredients under development.

Less money in the pockets of large agro-chemical companies is unlikely to get most people's sympathy, but what are the other impacts that we should all be concerned about?

Foremost in farmers' minds is their ability to deal with pests and diseases. Not only do they now have fewer tools to do so, those that remain are at greater risk of being less effective, as pests and diseases develop resistance to them through greater exposure.

One area this is being felt is potato production, where there is an increasing incidence of potato blight disease developing resistance to the small number of PPP that remain available to treat it. The effect of this is that yields go down and prices will rise - bad news for consumers.

Farmers and others in the food sector are genuinely concerned about the implications of current trends if they are allowed to continue.

The current regulatory environment in the EU is driving PPP research and development money away, with spend in the EU down from 25% of the global trade in the 1990s to 8% now. More significantly, if allowed to continue, it will likely mean more food destined for EU consumers will be produced outside of the EU, using the very same PPP no longer available in the EU, but without our strict food safety standards.

Integrated crop management (ICM) - using PPP alongside other means of controlling pests and diseases - is cited by many as a possible solution. Although farmers will undeniably have to adopt more ICM practices, there are sound practical, scientific and financial reasons why PPP will remain essential pest and disease management tools for many farmers in the foreseeable future.

If we are to have a more mature discussion about the place of PPP in modern society, the starting point is to acknowledge that conventional farming is a modern industry that uses science and technology to efficiently produce high quality, affordable food.

It is neither realistic, nor desirable, to try to turn the clock back to the era of horse-drawn ploughs and gangs of farm workers toiling to remove weeds from fields - an era when a far greater percentage of household income was spent on food compared to today.

We have no issue with taking medicine or using technology in our day-to-day lives, so perhaps the time has come for us to accept that, especially with the challenges of climate change to deal with, modern farming responsibly using PPP is in all our interests.