- The farmers' union threatens communities to stop spreading the sludge from their treatment plants if the establishment of a non-treatment zone is not suspended.
- A decree, published at the end of December, has since January 1 established areas of pesticide non-treatment around homes. From 3 to 20 meters depending on the crops, spreading techniques and products used.
- An entry into force that the FNSEA judges precipitated, while there are still many points of the decree to be clarified.
The FNSEA is carrying out its threats. The first agricultural union keeps across the gorge the entry into application, since January 1, areas of non-treatment (ZNT) to pesticides around inhabited areas.
On January 10, the FNSEA had already warned that it intended to carry out protest actions if there was not an immediate moratorium on the application - in other words, a suspension - of this decree and that it was awaiting responses from the government in this sense before January 14. The time has expired. During its greetings to the press, this Tuesday at its headquarters in Paris, the FNSEA announced the blocking, in the coming days, of wastewater treatment plants in France.
Three, five, ten or even twenty meters
It is "The" agricultural subject which has been annoying since last May and the taking, by several mayors of France, of orders prohibiting the spreading of synthetic pesticides, used in conventional agriculture, within a perimeter of 150 meters around the dwellings. In response, the government opened a public consultation on September 10 on the minimum distances to be respected between dwellings and spreading areas. Then, it ended up deciding on December 20, by publishing a decree imposing, from January 1, the minimum spreading distances recommended by the French Health Security Agency (ANSES). Namely 5 meters from homes for so-called low crops (vegetables, cereals), 10 meters for tall crops (fruit trees, vines) and 20 meters for "most dangerous" products. This last category remains “exceptional”, these “most dangerous” products representing only 0.3% of the phytosanitary products consumed each year in France.
In detail, the decree provides for the possibility of reducing these buffer zones within the framework of “commitment charters” validated at the departmental level between farmers, residents and elected officials. Up to 5 meters for arboriculture and 3 meters for vines, but provided that the most efficient spraying equipment is used from an environmental standpoint.
A hasty calendar for the FNSEA
It is not so much on the distances that plague the FNSEA - the environmental associations asked for "buffer" zones of 150 meters -, but on the timetable for the implementation of these ZNTs, said Eric Thirouin, assistant secretary general of the union agricultural. "We are amazed by the approach," he says. Farmers are asked to apply a decree that has not yet been defined. What spraying equipment will precisely reduce the buffer zones? What support will be given to farmers impacted by these non-treatment zones? Those in particular whose cultivated plots are in areas of diffuse habitat. Within the framework of the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy), can these areas which will be abandoned by farmers, because in ZNT, be classified as areas of ecological interest? "
For the FNSEA, the moratorium requested will allow the government "to clarify the gray areas of the decree" and "to continue the work on the good neighborly charters, not finished either". For its part, on this question of timing, the government repeats that it was under pressure. The Council of State, the highest administrative authority, had given him until December 11 to present a new decree. An argument repeated this Tuesday morning by Didier Guillaume, Minister of Agriculture. “It is true that the State was [forced] by the Council of State to modify the regulations on the protection of local residents and on the subject of ZNTs […]. On the other hand, on the way to do it, there were plenty of possibilities ”, answers Eric Thirouin.
Farmers will no longer take sewage sludge
The FNSEA does not yet specify when it intends to block the treatment plants. "The actions will be carried out in concert with the Young Farmers [another agricultural union]," says Jérôme Desprey, its secretary general. Be that as it may, we should not expect physical blockages at the entrances and exits of French treatment plants. But these, which treat wastewater from industries and individuals, generate waste called sewage sludge. “A large part of this sludge is spread in the fields as fertilizer, recalls Jérôme Desprey. It is a service, provided free of charge, by farmers. "
The FNSEA is therefore preparing to ask the farmers to no longer take care of this sewage sludge, leaving it to the communities to find other outlets for this waste. "We are talking about a million tonnes of dry matter produced per year in France, 52% of which comes from industrial sludge and 48% from urban sludge," the union said. And the alternative solutions to agricultural spreading - in particular that of sending them to treatment centers - cost ten to twenty times more expensive. "
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