Table 1 details the value of the wheat harvest to the individual economies of the three main EU wheat growing countries. Wheat is worth several billion Euros € to France (€ 7.2 billion Euros: $8.5 billion), Germany (€ 4.9 billion: $5.8 billion) and the UK (€ 2.4 billion: $2.8 billion).
Let us assume that disease mitigation – the planting of moderately disease resistant cultivars (see Brown et al., this edition) and application of a 3 spray fungicide regime (at a cost of 100 Euros per hectare, see Torriani et al., this edition) – is practiced uniformly across these three nations. Under these conditions, year-on-year wheat losses are between 5% and 10% (see above). The cost to each country’s economy is therefore twofold ( Table 2); (i) the direct loss of the wheat harvest due to disease and (ii) the cost of fungicide application, with total cost reduced by the enhanced yields. 5–10% losses in France, Germany and UK give direct costs ranging between €120 and 700 million. Fungicide treatment additionally costs the farmers between €160 and 500 million across these three nations. Such costs are counter-balanced by boosted harvests post-spraying (estimated to be some 2.5 tonnes per hectare (see Torriani et al., 2015)). This returns between €800 and 2400 million into the economies of the three EU member states. Such estimates highlight two things; (i) the high return (some 2.5–7 fold) on investment by the farmer in terms of efficacy of chemical control (ii) the constant need for fungicide discovery, particularly in the face or emerging resistance to extant chemistries by a constantly evolving fungus.