“Major setback”
: consternation dominates Thursday, February 1 among environmental NGOs after the government's announcement of a
“pause”
of the plan to reduce the use of pesticides, demanded by part of the angry agricultural world.
If the government has satisfied the majority agricultural unions, it will now have to deal with the revolt of the associations, obligatory stakeholders in the consultations to establish the French strategy.
The 4th version of the plan, called “Ecophyto 2030”, was at the end of consultation.
It was to chart the path towards a halving of the use of pesticides by 2030 (compared to 2015-2017) and accelerate the search for alternatives, urgent in the face of the impacts noted on the health of farmers, the mortality of bees, water pollution, etc.
“15 years of failure”
But Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced the
“pause”
of Ecophyto
“the time to put in place a new indicator”
to replace the current one, the
“Nodu”
, which measures the use of molecules by operators and which contests agricultural organizations.
“We will reject any participation in a new Ecophyto dynamic whose indicator would be biased
,” Générations Futures immediately responded.
“The Nodu allowed us to see that France has not fulfilled its objectives for almost 15 years: 15 years of failure to pause, that raises questions
,” is also surprised Thomas Uthayakumar, of the Foundation for Nature and Man, from AFP.
“What Gabriel Attal is proposing to us today completely contradicts the national strategies”
of decarbonization (SNBC), food (SNANC) or agricultural planning (PLOA), he regrets.
This official, however, welcomes the government's determination to oppose the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay), to obtain reciprocity of standards and to enforce the Egalim law, to protect the farmers' remuneration.
“Today the FNSEA won, but it will not bring anything to agricultural income, not a cent”
and
“it will allow us to continue the agriculture of the previous century by keeping ever more dangerous products on the market and delaying their withdrawal in a cynical manner
,” added the spokesperson for Générations Futures, François Veillerette, for AFP.
“This is a major political error because if the question of agricultural income is a real question for a certain number of farmers, it is not by sacrificing the environment and natural resources that we will resolve this problem , quite the contrary
,” he continued.
“The consultation and the break simply consist of taking the time to work (...) on questions of indicators, on questions of zoning, so that we can actually move forward on a plan which is more compliant and more balanced”
, puts the office of the Minister of Agriculture into perspective.
“A disastrous signal”
This
“pause”
is announced while the State has until June 30, 2024 to better respect its trajectories of reducing the use of pesticides and protect waters, by order of administrative justice.
“This announcement is therefore also a refusal to comply with a court decision
,” criticized the NGO Pollinis, one of the five associations behind this legal procedure,
“Justice for the Living”
to AFP .
Over the past 30 years, populations of field birds have fallen by 30% in France, according to studies which indicate that the intensification of agriculture is the main cause of this decline.
This pause
“is a purely political decision”
“ against
science and law and which will not solve the problems of farmers”
, estimated Pollinis.
For the WWF too, this pause is
“a disastrous signal”
.
“Chemical pollution is one of the main factors responsible for the decline of animal and plant biodiversity, at the same level as climate change
,” adds Jean Burkard, from WWF France.
“By favoring the proponents of intensive and agro-industrial agriculture more than the agricultural world in its diversity, the government is today announcing a new political, health and environmental failure
,” he criticizes.
“Certainly it is better to suspend than to have a cheap strategy
,” notes Sandrine Bélier, director of the NGO Humanity and Biodiversity, contacted by AFP.
“But Ecophyto is the main plan which supports farmers in their economic transition”
, via the 41 million euros distributed by the French Biodiversity Office (OFB) for research, experimentation, etc.
“Challenging this mechanism means giving up supporting farmers in their ecological transitions
,” she warns.
“The issue is the protection of biodiversity but also the health of farmers who are the first victims of the phytosanitary products they use
,” she recalls.