Pesticide sales fell in 2019 (illustration image). - JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER / AFP

In 2019, sales of pesticides fell in France by 44% in volume, after the surge in sales in 2018 (+ 18%), the government announced on Tuesday. Associations denounce a "coup de com".

In detail, the quantities sold of glyphosate, a controversial weedkiller, "decreased by 35% (-3.358 tonnes) between 2018 and 2019 after increasing by 11% (+999 tonnes) between 2017 and 2018", specified the ministries of Ecological transition and Agriculture in a joint press release. The French government had promised at the end of 2017 that this molecule would be banned "in its main uses" within three years, without waiting for the five years decided at European level.

A big increase in 2018

"These downward trends completely offset the increase in sales in 2018, which occurred just before the increase in the fee for diffuse pollution which occurred on January 1, 2019," the government said in its press release. "A coup de com '", reacted the association Future Generations, which was surprised to see trends expressed in volumes "while the indicator for monitoring the plan is the Nodu, based on the number of doses" and results based "on non-consolidated data".

According to these "provisional data", the total quantities of active substances sold for agricultural uses, excluding biocontrol products, "decreased by 44% between 2018 and 2019 (-28,078 tonnes), after having increased by 18% between 2017 and 2018 ( +11,870 tonnes) ", said the government, which considers that these results" allow us to note the first effects of the measures taken (...) since 2018 to reduce the use of plant protection products ".

A third plan launched in April

Concerning the quantities of products sold considered as "the most worrying", called CMR (carcinogens, mutagens and reprotoxic), they decreased "by more than 50% in 2019 compared to 2018", the government said. Conversely, the relative share of biocontrol products, alternatives to chemical pesticides, "continues to increase, which illustrates a gradual and continuous substitution of the most dangerous substances by these products," said the authorities.

The Court of Auditors had pinpointed last February 4 the policy of reduction of agricultural pesticides led by the State, which had hitherto produced results "far below the objectives" in 2018, despite a considerable budget, of some 400 million euros (including 71 million levied on the fee for diffuse pollution).

Since the Grenelle of the environment at the end of 2007, which had set a goal of reducing the use of synthetic pesticides by 50% in 10 years, the two successive plans implemented, Ecophyto 1 and 2, have resulted in failures . In April, the government therefore tried for the third time to detoxify agriculture from the excesses of chemistry by launching an Ecophyto 2 + plan.

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