Two documents,
two expiry dates,both yours to check.

It is the licence required of anyone who uses, distributes or advises on plant protection products in a professional capacity in Belgium. It comes in categories according to the role: an assistant professional user holds one category, a professional user and someone distributing to professionals hold another, and distribution to amateur users is a further category again. A contractor applying products for a farmer is a professional user, and the person responsible needs the corresponding category rather than the assistant's. It is valid for six years and renews only on completing the prescribed continuing education, so the expiry date tells you something the existence of a licence does not.

Because a machine that is out of calibration applies the wrong dose even when everything else is done correctly, and a worn nozzle produces drift that lands where no authorisation permits it. Equipment used professionally for application must therefore pass a periodic technical inspection, every three years in Belgium, carried out by the competent service, and carry proof of it. Using a machine that has not passed is an offence. It is worth asking to see the proof and checking its date, which takes ten seconds.

Yours, as the operator of the land, and this catches people out every year. The register has to record the product, the dose, the date, the parcel and the crop, and be kept for at least three years. If a contractor applies something on your behalf and does not give you those details, your register is incomplete and you are the one in default, not the contractor. So we hand the data over after every pass as a matter of course. If you use a contractor who does not, ask before the season ends rather than when an inspection is already arranged.

No. Application near surface water is subject to a buffer zone, and the width of that zone comes from the authorisation for the specific product rather than from a general rule. Drift-reducing equipment can allow a narrower zone, but only where the authorisation provides for it and under the conditions it sets. Where a product's conditions and a client's preference conflict, the conditions win and we will say so. The authorisation on the label is the instruction, not a recommendation.

Often, and nobody can promise it. The effect depends on the organism, its stage, the weather in the days after application, the condition of the crop and the decisions taken across the whole season, most of which lie outside a contractor's control. What can be committed to is doing it correctly: the right product used within its authorisation, the right dose, a calibrated machine, the right conditions to travel and apply, and an honest record of what was done. Anyone guaranteeing control is guaranteeing other people's weather.

It is a fair thing to weigh, and a new company should not pretend otherwise. What is checkable does not depend on age: the licence category and its expiry, the equipment inspection and its expiry, whether the authorisation conditions are followed, and whether the records come back to you. Those are the same tests you would sensibly apply to a contractor who had been working for thirty years, and they are the reason this page tells you to ask for documents rather than to trust a reputation.