NO DECISION has yet been made on the fate of glyphosate, with last week's EU committee vote on a proposal to re-licence the herbicide for a five-year period failing to reach a qualified majority.

The decision will now be postponed to an appeals committee at the end of the month – a frustrating outcome for NFU Scotland, which pulled out all the stops last week in its campaigning efforts to have the product re-licensed for longer.

The science – in the form of reports by the European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency – has been clear that glyphosate is a safe and environmentally friendly product and NFUS has been insisting that any decision made on its reauthorisation should be based on that science, rather than popular politics.

Union president Andrew McCornick wrote to both European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, and two sector commissioners, Vytenis Andriukaitis and Phil Hogan, to stress this point, as well as sending two delegates to conduct meetings with UK and Scottish Government representatives in Brussels, and Copa Cogeca.

“Glyphosate is vital to Scottish farmers who use it to control weeds, manage harvests, and reduce grain drying costs," said Mr McCornick. "This failure to obtain a majority vote is just creating further uncertainty for our members, many of whom need to start planning for next year.

“Off the back of such a difficult harvest for so many Scottish farmers, the thought of not having such a useful product to help is a very daunting thought indeed."

To drive home that point, Mr McCornick has asked all members and stakeholders affected by the glyphosate uncertainty to email or tweet Messrs Junker, Andriukaitis and Hogan to explain just how important the product is to their business – and to use the #Glyphosateisvital tag while they do so.

The contact details to aim for are:

* President Juncker: president.juncker@ec.europa.eu and https://twitter.com/JunckerEU ;

* Commissioner Andriukaitis: cab-andriukaitis-webpage@ec.europa.eu and https://twitter.com/V_Andriukaitis

* Commissioner Phil Hogan: phil.hogan@ec.europa.eu and https://twitter.com/PhilHoganEU