While a parliamentary report to be presented Wednesday believes that the schedule for the removal of glyphosate will be difficult to hold, France Nature Environment recalls that the end of the use of this herbicide remains "a goal of health and environment absolutely essential" .

ON DECRYPT

Removing glyphosate will have a high cost. This is the main conclusion of the report of the "joint information mission on the monitoring of the strategy of exit of the glyphosate" led by parliamentarians, of which the AFP obtained a copy of the report before its presentation envisaged Wednesday. "This report is a plea to postpone the deadline for the ban on glyphosate," said Jean-David Abel, vice president of France Nature Environment, at the microphone of Europe 1.

While France has committed to dispense with this controversial herbicide on January 1, 2021 in its main uses, and January 1, 2023 for all its uses, the parliamentary report considers "unaware of waiting until December 31, 2020 "to know" what cultural situations "will have to stop using the herbicide on January 1, 2021 and those who can benefit from a delay. The mission headed by deputies Jean-Luc Fugit (LREM) and Jean-Baptiste Moreau (LREM) requests that the National Agricultural Research Institute (INRA) and the agricultural technical institutes specify "by June 2020" the situations "that will not be able to withstand glyphosate stopping on 1 January 2021 without threatening the survival of the farm and its environment". Because, says the report, the planned removal schedule will be expensive for farmers.

Significant additional labor costs

These additional costs would concern, in particular, labor costs (12.7 million euros of overtime), fuel consumption multiplied by three or four (87 million euros), and investments in new equipment. In total, the removal of this cheap herbicide will increase farm costs by between 50 and 150 euros per hectare, according to the report. In addition, alternative weed control techniques (additional tractor and machine runs) would also emit an additional 226,000 tonnes of CO2, according to the general association of AGPB grain producers cited in the report.

"We can not put people in front of false choices"

Conclusions that do not convince Jean-David Abel. "If you make the French choose between the plague and the cholera saying, 'it's the glyphosate that damages the soil, biodiversity, water, health', or so 'it's hours of tractors and c 'CO2', you make people choose between Charybdis and Scylla, "he explains. "This is typically what part of French agriculture is locked up and we do not want anymore."

"We can not put people in front of false choices," he says, adding that we must "accompany farmers to do without these herbicides". "It will take time in 2020, 2021 or 2022," he admits, "but it is an absolutely indispensable health and environmental goal." And to conclude: "This report seems to us problematic in the first analysis, because it seems to be a plea to postpone the deadline of the ban of the glyphosate".