Paris (AFP)

Limit fertilizers, soil erosion and imported deforestation: the production of peas, beans and lentils, which seems to have all the attractions of the miracle solution for the agroecological transition, is still very largely in deficit in France.

Green lentils, black lentils, green peas, field beans, lupins, chickpeas: among his 200 hectares of cultivation, Vincent Seyeux, a farmer in Mayenne, has mainly grown legumes for around twenty years.

But faced with the dominant crops - wheat, corn, barley - he quickly realized that it was complicated to find a place in the silos.

"Many people have turned away from these crops because it made things a little too complex, and therefore it's easier to make more standard crops where we have larger volumes, where there is less need to pay attention to pollution between batches, between cultures ", he explains to AFP.

A difficulty that he circumvented by creating with three Agro-Logic associates, a processing unit that sorts, dries and bags his crops and those of dozens of other farmers.

These logistical concerns are part of the brakes that will have to be removed to hope to regain the protein sovereignty advocated by Emmanuel Macron even before the Covid-19 crisis. And thus to get out of the old equilibrium induced by a trade agreement negotiated in the 1960s, which attributed the production of vegetable proteins (soybeans, rapeseed) to the Americas and that of starch (wheat, cereals) to Europe.

Especially since the environmental benefits are well known, including the ability of the legume to capture nitrogen, and thus reduce the fertilizer needs of the next crop.

However, legumes are stagnating at around 275,000 hectares today, according to Antoine Henrion, president of Terres univia, the interprofession of vegetable oils and proteins.

At the same time, "there was a sharp increase in imports of pulses, + 31% between 2016 and 2017, and it continues, while we are producing them in France," explains Bernadette Loisel, food project manager at Brittany Chambers of Agriculture.

For Mr. Henrion, competitiveness is hard to come by because of the bans on certain pesticides pronounced in recent years.

- A protein plan at the start of the school year? -

A phytosanitary argument evoked in a completely different sense by a peasant from the Great West who requires anonymity: highlighting the "business" that "phytos" represent for cooperatives, he emphasizes the least use of these products for legumes .

The situation is, however, changing, if you believe it, because by seeing the phytosanitary arsenal reduced, farmers "find themselves in technical dead ends and finally take an interest in legumes".

"The diversification of rotations" and therefore their lengthening, "with legumes makes it possible to break the cycles of pests (diseases, insects, weeds) of majority crops (wheat, rapeseed) and therefore reduce the use of pesticides", explains the NGO WWF, cited by a recent Senate report for sustainable food.

Certain legumes are gradually taking their place in the landscape: soybeans, a crop in which the interprofession has invested a lot, have grown in ten years from 20,000 hectares to 150,000 hectares "and even 180,000 hectares in 2020, notes Anne Wagner, president of Proteins France.

A crucial issue for breeders, who import quantity of GMO soybeans from the United States or Brazil, where it is singled out for its contribution to deforestation.

Today, French agriculture produces 55% of vegetable proteins intended for animal feed.

The interprofession aims to see this figure rise to 65%, says Mr. Henrion, who with the whole industry is waiting for the firm protein plan promised by President Macron since the start of his five-year term.

In this way, he would like to double the proportion of legumes in arable crops, from 4 to 8%.

After a delay due to the health crisis, the Minister of Agriculture Didier Guillaume mentioned to the National Assembly a presentation of this plan "at the start of the September-October school year".

© 2020 AFP