Farmers' crisis: environmental measures put on “pause”
French farmers, spearheading the peasant revolt in Europe, lifted most of their blockades this Friday, February 2. The FNSEA and the Young Farmers, the majority unions, had launched a call to this effect after the new round of announcements from the government on Thursday. But this exit from the crisis comes at the cost of environmental ambition.
The Ecophyto 2030 plan, which aims to reduce the use of pesticides by 50% by 2030, has been put on hold. © AFP - PHILIPPE HUGUEN
By: Pauline Gleize Follow
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It is a plan which aims to reduce the use of pesticides by 50% by 2030 compared to the period 2015-2017. It was also supposed to accelerate the search for alternatives to pesticides which have impacts on the health of farmers, the mortality of bees and even water pollution. “Ecophyto 2030” was finally put on “pause” by the French government.
The executive wants to use this time to find a new indicator for quantifying the substances used in order to replace the “Nodu” (Number of unit doses), which measures the use of molecules by farmers and which agricultural organizations contest. On the contrary, its questioning makes environmental protection associations jump. Nodu has in fact “
made it possible to see that France has not fulfilled its objectives for almost 15 years
”, estimated Thomas Uthayakumar, of the Foundation for Nature and Man, to AFP.
For its part, the government assures that it simply wants to “
sit another month
” to ensure that the Ecophyto plan “
is perfectly understood, as part of support and not punishment
”. But time is running out. The State has until June 30 to better comply with its paths for reducing pesticide use. Order of administrative justice, because previous plans lacked effectiveness.
“No-treatment areas”
Still on the issue of pesticides, the government plans to appeal procedures concerning “non-treatment zones”, areas close to homes or waterways where the use of pesticides is prohibited. This announcement comes at the beginning of January, the administrative court of Orléans annulled prefectural decrees setting the conditions for the implementation of these ZNTs. They had been denounced by local residents and NGOs who considered the conditions too unprotective.
Furthermore, Gabriel Attal targeted Anses without naming it. He said he wanted to “
get out of a situation where our health agency
” banned a phytosanitary product molecule in France before it was banned in the EU, as was the case for the herbicide S-metolachlor.
Other environmental protection measures were called into question during this mobilization. At European level, the Commission proposed at the start of the week to grant a “
partial
” exemption from the set-aside obligations imposed by the Common Agricultural Policy. It was in fact planned that the exemptions linked to the war in Ukraine would end and that 4% of agricultural areas would be “
unproductive
”, that is to say fallow or planted with hedges or groves, for example. On Thursday, the French Prime Minister also committed to relaxing the rules requiring farmers to maintain grassland areas.
However, meadows and hedges are favorable to biodiversity. They welcome insects, worms and other birds. Studies cited by AFP show that over the last 30 years, populations of field birds have fallen by 30% in France. The intensification of agriculture would be the main cause of this decline.
(With AFP)
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