How close do you need to be between houses and pesticide spray areas? This is, in essence, the question that the government asks all French people who wish to answer it. On Monday, September 9th, three ministries launched a consultation on the minimum distances between housing and agricultural pesticide application areas, anticipating the government's initial schedule, after controversies stemming from attempts at local regulation.

This three-week online consultation is open to all and covers the standard to be applied in all departments, where no local charter has been signed, the Ministry of Agriculture said.

The government has proposed Saturday to set this minimum distance to 5 meters for so-called low crops (cereals for example) and 10 meters for high crops, such as vineyards or arboriculture. It justifies this decision by the scientific recommendations of the National Agency of Sanitary Security (ANSES) going in this direction.

Decree must come into effect on January 1, 2020

The consultation "on the model of the great debate", will be opened simultaneously on the sites of the Ministry of Health, the Ecological Transition and Solidarity, and that of Agriculture and Food.

It will last until the end of September, and its results will be analyzed and analyzed for two months, in order to develop a decree that will come into effect on January 1, 2020, in areas where no departmental charter has been signed, said the Ministry.

It was supposed to start on October 1st but it was advanced and announced last weekend, due to the controversies created by a high-profile municipal decree taken by the mayor of Langouet (Ille-et-Vilaine) Daniel Cueff, followed other local elected officials. Its decree prohibited the use of phytopharmaceutical products within 150 meters of dwellings. He was suspended by administrative justice.

At the same time, other local consultations in the prefectures are continuing for the preparation of departmental charters. "The sewn hand of these charters will prevail over the decree" warned the ministry. To date, eight have been signed.

"Local Intelligence"

"We believe in local intelligence: if a charter establishes an area of ​​no treatment at 8 meters or at the opposite 50 meters from a building, it will prevail over the national framework," said the ministry.

The FNSEA, the main trade union of the agricultural profession, said this weekend that it privileged these local solutions to supervise the spreading of pesticides.

The Rural Coordination, however, expressed doubts about the creation of such charters: "Who will represent civil society in the prefectures? We do not know," said Bernard Lannes, its president, Monday at a press conference .

"If we stay with this type of charter, everyone will sit on it," he said, recalling the failure, according to him, of the charter that farmers had signed with industry and mass retailers. the outcome of the Estates General of Food.

"From three to five meters are already thousands of hectares" removed from agricultural production, "but 150 meters is no because it represents millions of hectares," he added.

With AFP