Faced with droughts, "we will have to conduct a deep and rapid reflection"

INTERVIEW

The summer of 2020 was marked by a severe drought, which affected most of the French departments.

This was also the case in 2017, 2018 and 2019, further illustration of global warming.

Faced with this observation, some are calling for a radical change in the organization of agriculture in France.

"I believe that we will have to carry out a deep reflection, but fast because we do not have time anymore", warns Monday on Europe 1 Emma Haziza, hydrologist, president of Mayane, a research center on the adaptation to climate change.

"You can't take years. The problem is that adaptation takes a lot of time."

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The scientist makes a relentless observation.

"We see that everyone is affected, grain farmers, wine growers, market gardeners, breeders ... Everyone needs water", she notes.

"They all suffered from this drought and at some point you can't compensate for these losses just financially, you can't continue to heal wounds."

And to get out of it, we must first break a vicious circle.

"We can see that we are also undergoing the use of our soils and our land, in particular with rather intensive farming techniques developed in certain areas and which have accelerated the loss of organic matter, which have accelerated the fact that the we no longer have these microbial and fungal populations that held up the soil in the face of drought, ”explains Emma Haziza.

"Today, these are soils that are poor and have no more nutrients. And therefore, it accelerates this phenomenon even more."

"Consuming bottled water today is a real problem"

One of the solutions is to adapt agriculture to the territories, and not the other way around.

"We cannot decide on a global scale. That is to say that each territory has a geological subsoil, a type of aquifer, and therefore it will be able to accept a type of agriculture", specifies the scientist.

"We arrive at rates of up to 80% of water which is used by agriculture for species like corn which are extremely water-demanding. We must ask ourselves questions because this corn is also used to feed farms and therefore these farms also pose a problem on a global scale in terms of climate. "

But agriculture is not the only cause.

The consumer also has a role to play, in particular by limiting the purchase of bottled water, while Volvic, for example, is accused of drying up rivers in Auvergne.

"We have to completely review the way we consume water. The fact of consuming bottled water today is a real problem," says Emma Haziza.

"Today we no longer need to go and collect huge, colossal amounts of water in order to then be able to carry them through plastic materials. It is part of our changes that we will have to implement. is our future that is at stake. "