France, Europe’s leading agricultural power, is struggling to do without them: pesticides remain considered a “means of production” by a majority of farmers (AFP/Archives/Philippe HUGUEN)
France, Europe’s leading agricultural power, has difficulty doing without them: pesticides remain considered a “means of production” by a majority of farmers who refuse to do without them “without an alternative solution” while their uses are expected to decline significantly by 2030.
Three days before the Agricultural Show and to the great satisfaction of the majority union FNSEA, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced the abandonment of Nodu, a reference indicator for measuring the reduction in the use of these substances, in favor of a European index, to the great dismay of environmental NGOs.
Where is France located?
Worldwide, the use of pesticides has continued to increase since 1990. In Europe, it has increased by less than 1% compared to 1990, when it jumped 191% on the American continent. In France, it increased by 7% in 2021, but decreased by 29% compared to 1990, according to the UN agency FAO.
Pesticides: the indicators at the heart of the debate in France (AFP/Sylvie HUSSON, Sabrina BLANCHARD, Valentina BRESCHI)
“France has long ranked in the average of EU countries in terms of the quantities of active substances used per hectare” with 3.7 kilograms per hectare in 2021, behind the Netherlands, the leading consumer European (10.9 kg/ha), and Germany (4.1 kg/ha), according to a parliamentary report.
From “progress” to “poison”
After the Second World War, pesticides appeared as “progress” which made it possible to turn the page on the great crises of the 19th century such as potato blight in Ireland, responsible for the Great Famine.
A field of wheat ready to be harvested in Saint-Philbert-sur-Risle, in Eure, August 7, 2023 (AFP/Archives/JOEL SAGET)
Yields, which soared until the end of the 1990s, then stagnated, could be reduced under the effect of climate crises.
“When we use pesticides on a massive scale, we generate resistance. So, in any case, pesticides will lose their effectiveness,” explains Christian Huyghe, scientific director at INRAE.
After the Grenelle Environment Forum, in 2008 France set a target of reducing the use of synthetic pesticides by 50% in ten years. The two successive plans implemented, Ecophyto 1 and 2, ended in failure.
But a dynamic is underway. In 2014, plant protection products are banned in gardens and public spaces.
The following year, in addition to its control mission, the health agency Anses was entrusted with the responsibility of authorizing the marketing of pesticides. Since then, the vast majority of the most toxic molecules (CMR1 and 2), described as “poison” by environmental NGOs, have been withdrawn.
Contrary logics
The French Ecophyto 2030 plan maintains the objective of halving uses (compared to the 2015-17 period), but also wants to preserve competitiveness by seeking alternative solutions to 75 molecules — representing nearly 80% of the volumes sold in France, according to INRAE — which are most exposed to the risk of withdrawal from the market in the next 5-7 years.
An arborist works in his apple and pear orchard in Dampleux, in Aisne, August 8, 2022 (AFP/Archives/FRANCOIS LO PRESTI)
But the cereal growers contest this plan, which according to them does not reflect the reduction efforts already made, of “-46% in 20 years”. “From the moment we replace an effective product, but considered harmful, with a less effective product, we are obliged to use it more often in the fields,” says Éric Thirouin, representative of wheat producers.
For the INRAE researcher, we must move away from this “logic by substitution”.
“For example, can we ensure tomorrow that we only weed half of an area, to have a combination between a reduction in phytophytes and mechanical weeding”, which would make it possible to “slow down the process of emergence of resistance?”, he suggests.
“Distortions of competition”
For the majority unions, these changes, “not at all simple”, would result in a fall in production and a destruction of sectors.
They welcome the renewal of the controversial herbicide glyphosate, the failure of the European legislative project on pesticides this fall, and welcomed a vote by the European Parliament at the beginning of February to pave the way for new genome editing techniques (NGT ), described as “new GMOs” by their detractors.
But they still denounce “huge distortions of competition” within the EU, judging that France has gone further alone and too quickly.
Daniel Sauvaitre, from the fruit and vegetable inter-profession, thus has “a very great fear for the production of apples, with the end announced for 2026 of Movento, which makes it possible to control the hoary aphid”: “our neighbors can use other molecules authorized in Europe but not us, because France has banned them.
French beet growers, deprived of the neonicotinoid insecticide acetamiprid, which remains used in Germany, have called for its reauthorization. There is no question of “going back in time”, however, decided in early February the Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau.
© 2024 AFP
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