Faced with recurrent droughts, farmers worry

This summer again, farmers are running out of water. After a particularly dry summer of 2019, drought is raging again over a large part of France. Friday, 68 departments were subject to prefectural decrees imposing water restriction measures on all or part of their territory.

The Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region is particularly affected by the high temperatures and the lack of rain, which cause the water level to drop and the soil to dry up. So much so that several sectors of Saône-et-Loire and Côte-d'Or have been declared in a “ crisis ” situation by their respective prefectures. Only domestic uses are thus authorized in these sectors, in particular those priority sectors responding to health, public sanitation, civil security and the supply of drinking water to the population.

Map of water restriction orders as of 07/31/2020 Propluvia, Ministry of Ecological Transition.

Threatened Charolais breeding

In the department of Saône-et-Loire in particular, farmers are worried. In particular, breeders of Charolais cows, whose breeding, carried out on natural, non-irrigable meadows, is totally dependent on rainfall. The drought has become so regular that it threatens their future. " The additional cost of fodder is 15 to 30,000 euros, or roughly the total average annual income of a breeder, which is 15,000 euros ", explains to AFP Christian Bajard, president of the agricultural union FDSEA of the department. . " How do we manage to live with that?" It will end up eliminating farms, ”warns the trade unionist. In four years, the number of Charolais heads has fallen from 230,000 to less than 200,000 in the department.

Faced with repeated droughts, the Minister of Agriculture, Julien Denormandie, proposed to " simplify the procedures a little " to allow farmers to build water reservoirs. " It is sometimes necessary in territories to make a little more massive water reservoirs and that, in our country, it takes eight to ten years because we have an ever stronger team of remedies ", lamented the Minister on Friday morning at the microphone of Europe 1.

Conflicts of use multiply

Stressing the " nonsense " of receiving "a lot of water " in winter and running out of it in summer, the Minister intends to " support and find solutions to allow water to be available in summer by capturing water. 'winter water '. As part of the stimulus plan under negotiation, it provides for “ financial support ” in particular to help breeders better equip themselves to capture this precious rainwater. " In the recovery plan we will make these modernizations when they are necessary ", specifying that they are generally " small amounts ".

The demands of farmers to store water during the winter sometimes come up against opposition from environmental associations, which advocate an adaptation of agricultural practices to global warming and less water-intensive crops. In June, a parliamentary report underlined that water in France generates " greed and competition, sometimes intensely ", especially in agriculture, with " conflicts of use " which are increasing. In the Aquitaine basin, 21 water retention projects out of 34 were in legal dispute, and 31 out of 60 in the Loire-Bretagne basin, according to this report.