Neonicotinoids: a guarantee of transition for producers and scientists, the opposition is getting organized - France 24

Paris (AFP)

Prepare for the end of neonicotinoids: while the government is preparing to temporarily reintroduce these controversial insecticides to save the beet industry, producers and scientists tried on Tuesday to give pledges of their commitment to the transition, but environmental deputies and associations reaffirmed their opposition to this text.

The sugar beet interprofessional organization (AIBS) presented on Tuesday a "prevention plan" and a series of commitments which should make it possible to "accelerate the transition" and "protect pollinators", threatened by the return to the plains of these "systemic" insecticides which, by coating the seed, circulate within the plant throughout its growth.

After banning them in 2018, the government agreed to grant temporary exemptions from next year, as in a dozen other European countries, in order to curb the "beet yellows" which has undermined this summer returns.

In question, a green aphid, vector of the virus, which develops on the cultures not protected by an insecticide.

Despite opposition from environmentalists and beekeepers, the government is relying on article 53 of the European regulation on phytosanitary products, which allows the ban on certain products to be waived when there is a "danger that cannot be controlled by 'other reasonable means'.

In their plan, the professionals notably commit to reducing "by 25%" the use of neonicotinoids in seed coating "compared to the previous practice".

They also undertake to restrict to "a single year" the use of seeds treated with neonicotinoids per plot over the transition period 2021-2023, during which the exemption must run, which should be renewed each year, subject to the vote. of law by Parliament.

Monday evening, the LREM deputies conditioned their vote in favor of the bill, which will be debated on October 5 in the National Assembly at first reading: they will vote this text only if the exemption is explicitly limited to only beets.

"This is a big step backwards. We call on deputies to vote with their convictions rather than following group instructions," Mathieu Orphelin said Tuesday, during a press conference by the Ecology, Democracy, Solidarity group (EDS ), which brings together 17 deputies, mainly disappointed from the left wing of Macronie.

He described this bill as "the last big vote on biodiversity of the five-year term".

While the text is to be examined Wednesday by the Economic Affairs Committee of the Assembly, the National Union of French beekeeping (Unaf) has already planned a "happening" a few meters away, on the esplanade des Invalides, to oppose this text along with a dozen associations and unions.

- Doubling of the research effort -

This plan is in addition to another, relating to agronomic research, which will be carried out by the National Institute of Agronomic and Environmental Research (Inrae) and the Technical Institute of Beet (ITB).

Aimed at accelerating the discovery of alternatives, it was handed over at the end of the morning to the Minister of Agriculture Julien Denormandie.

The researchers will in particular be able to rely on the advances already obtained within the framework of the Aker research program, which has just ended after having mobilized around one hundred people for eight years, around improving beet yield by sugar.

"We hope to progress in particular on resistant varieties, because we have given ourselves an enormous genetic potential, with genetic diversity (without GMOs) as a result of the program," said in an interview with AFP Philippe Mauguin, President of INRAE.

As often in agronomy, however, the salvation of beet growers will come from a "combination of solutions", he warned.

The research program, endowed with 7 million euros in public subsidies, with self-financing from INRAE, and co-financing from the sector, "will mobilize 20 million euros in three years", he added. He specified, that is to say a quasi-doubling of the means mobilized recently in the fight against viruses.

A re-authorization of these pesticides, even provisional, would constitute "a serious error", judged for their part a group of scientists attached to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), who underlined "the disastrous impacts "of these products, in a column published by the daily Liberation.

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