The use of new green manuring technologies: green manuring is the process of using plant material to fertilize soil rather than chemicals, integrated fertility approaches of combining the use of chemicals, chemical fertilizers, with organic forms of fertilizers.

land sown exclusively for the production of green manure (green fallow).

It is a small part of the total market in overall terms, but fertilizer is very important in our cities and towns to maintain proper green spaces.

(a) cultivation of legumes, green manures or deep-rooting plants in an appropriate multi-annual rotation programme;

Canada has a very, very good record in that area. Over the last 40 years we have been part of the green revolution and have helped to identify, develop and now use seeds, herbicides, pesticides, fungicides and fertilizers that have helped us increase our yield exponentially.

Many of the planned measures are directed towards this objective: - improving the accessibility of legislation: 1996 plans include recasting the legislation relating to veterinary medicines and agricultural tractors and consolidation of the directives on machinery, technical standards and regulations, fertilizers, collective dismissals, dangerous substances and preparations, and the regulations on the common organization of the sugar market and the financing of the common agricultural policy; - rationalizing the legislation: examples are the general review of the strategy on waste, the framework proposal on water (integrated management) ...[+++], the follow-up to the Green Paper on food law, the horizontal rules governing State aids to replace the existing rules for the motor industry, man-made fibres and textiles; - lightening the administrative and other burdens resulting from legislation: for instance, simplification of the directive on the marketing of plant health products (single, fast-track procedure for certain pesticides); review of current thresholds and reference-back clauses in the merger-control regulation; simplification of rules of origin for Central and Eastern Europe, EFTA and the Mediterranean; promotion of use of administrative sources for statistical purposes; - widening the range of available instruments, notably by developing alternative approaches in place of legislation: implementation of the new non-legislative approach to accounting; development of frameworks for voluntary agreements with industry on environmental protection and "green" taxes and charges in the Member States; - facilitating the application of legislation by decentralization (e.g. Notice on cooperation with national authorities in competition law matters) or by flanking measures (e.g. methodological and financial support to the Member States for the implementation of the regulation on business statistical surveys).