Collective. Intensive agriculture and the massive use of phytosanitary products in conventional production methods have been poisoning and impoverishing the soil for decades, just as they are damaging the health of our farmers and, ultimately, of consumers and consumers. It’s not just about food: agriculture is also the basis for the production of raw materials for hygiene-beauty and health products. These methods involve a real risk of irreversible damage to the environment and to living organisms.
Just as the atmosphere cannot support an ever-increasing concentration of greenhouse gases, soils, waterways and biodiversity cannot absorb ever more of these chemicals which damage and destroy them: scientific studies show that biodiversity is much greater on plots conducted in organic farming. The link between certain cancers and the presence of pesticides in nature is also increasingly established.
Requirement level
The fact that the consumption of organic products is temporarily experiencing a slight decline in our country, after significant growth in recent years, does not take anything away from the topicality of the issue: it would be like rejoicing to see CO emissions2 go back up.
The growing awareness of the importance of the issue of biodiversity, as critical for the future of the planet as that of climate change, should lead us to raise our level of standards. So what to do?
Phytosanitary product savings certificates (CEPP), which aim to encourage players in the agricultural world to reduce their consumption of these products, represent an initiative to achieve this. Nevertheless, such a system would not be sufficient to achieve an ambitious goal of reducing chemical pesticides. Our society must move towards a zero pesticide goal to preserve our environment and our food!
CO emission quota markets2, a political lever in the reduction of greenhouse gases, can represent a model to follow. In France and in Europe in any case, this system has significantly contributed to the reduction of our own emissions, − 25% in twenty years for France.
Two advantages
The mechanism has two advantages: highlighting the “positive externalities” of virtuous agricultural models based on the polluter pays principle on the one hand; do so via a universal signal that is immediately understandable by all players, namely the price, on the other hand.
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