Lhe pact and the agricultural orientation and future law, which must define the future of French agriculture and is currently the subject of consultations, must address the preservation of agricultural land, a major issue facing to France’s loss of food sovereignty and the environmental and climatic challenges facing its agriculture.
Nearly 20% of agricultural land has disappeared in fifty years. The artificialization of soils buries hectares of fertile land under concrete. Land speculation encourages many owners to leave their agricultural land fallow, in the hope that it will bring them a lot of money by one day becoming buildable, thus rendering a significant part of agricultural land unproductive.
To preserve their volume and make this wait-and-see approach irrelevant, it becomes imperative to apply without compromise the principle of zero net artificialization (ZAN); departments and intercommunities must protect agricultural spaces using the tools at their disposal (protected agricultural zones and protection zones for peri-urban agricultural and natural spaces).
Regulate the land market
The legislator must strengthen these protections and duplicate them in forest and natural areas, essential links in an agroecological system. The use of the “waste land procedure” should also be made more flexible and generalized, which reminds owners of the obligation to cultivate their land, directly or by a farmer.
Furthermore, agricultural practices intensive in inputs and tillage have increased erosion and chemical pollution of land, which loses its fertility. It is therefore essential to generalize agroecological production systems, the only ones capable of preserving and restoring soil integrity. This need must be enshrined in the pact and the agricultural orientation and future law by providing that with each transfer of use (sale or lease), land be allocated as a priority to agroecological or agricultural projects. biological.
It is also necessary to facilitate access to land for farmers by regulating land markets. 14% of the country’s useful agricultural area, or 3.7 million hectares, is already under the control of financial companies, a doubling in twenty years. This phenomenon poses two problems. Firstly, these firms increase the tension on land by purchasing the shares of agricultural companies at prices well above those of the market.
You have 50% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.