Reintroduction of a pesticide, water storage or farm enlargement: the bill destined to “raise the limitations” of farmers transported by Senator Laurent Dupumb strips heated debates, fields in Parliament.
It is assumed that closing the episode of the wrath of the campaigns born in the winter of 2024, this text revived the divisions: the first Fensea agricultural union judges “vital” its adoption to give “” means of production “to the operators, while the peasant confederation (3rd union) rejects the measures that describe as” dead “for life time. Sending it to a joint committee: Therefore, it is the version adopted in the Senate that serves as the basis for the arbitrations of this CMP.
• Acetamipride reintroduction
The most criticized measure of the text is the derogatory reintroduction of this insecticide of the family of neonicotinoids, prohibited in France since 2018, but authorized in Europe until 2033. Producers of sugar beets claim this provision, which claim to have no other solution to effectively protect their crops. Fensea, as rural coordination (2nd Union), denounces the “unfair competition” of other European producers and fear the imports of sugar or hazelnuts produced with prohibited pesticides in France.
The return of the neonicotinoids, very toxic to the bees, is criticized by the environmental defenders, the beekeepers (who saw their production of honey collapsed after the introduction of these substances in the 1990s) and the peasant confederation. Public watercolors recently warned of “persistence in the environment” of neonicotinoids, whose reintroduction would open the way “to a degradation of natural environments, with strong consequences in pollinators, soils, human health (…) and water resources.”
The question is divided even into the rows of the Government, where the Minister of Ecological Transition is hostile upon his return.
• The role of the ANSES
The Senate text establishes the possibility that the Government imposes “priorities” in the work of the Health Agency, ordered since 2015 to evaluate the danger of pesticides, but also authorizes its marketing. The Minister of Agriculture, Annie Ginevard, had proposed to create a “guidance committee for the protection of cultures” that allows to establish a “list of priority uses”, which the ANS must respect.
The general director of the agency, Benoît Vallet, explained in March that the adoption of the text, as it is, would resign. The elected officials of the left and the scientists had denounced an infraction of the independence of the ANS. Several amendments of the deputies abolished the imposition of “priorities” in Anses. The rejection of the text presented the version of the Senate on the table, which would be ready for the “concessions”, according to a parliamentary source.
• Water irrigation and storage
The initial text aimed at facilitating water storage for crop irrigation, in a context of rarefaction linked to climate change. If all farmers agree that there is no possible agriculture without water, they are divided into reserves, their size and uses.
The associations have warned about “the establishment of mega hunters that monopolize” water resources “for the benefit of intensive agriculture” and the risk of less protection of wetlands, “essential against floods and droughts.” The flagship element on water storage, eliminated in the committee, therefore, returns in its initial version.
• Intensive agriculture
The text adopted by the Senate proposes to facilitate the expansion or creation of intensive agricultural buildings. From certain thresholds, farms are considered classified facilities for environmental protection (ICPE) due to their emissions and must register or obtain authorization for larger puppies. These thresholds are aligned in the European directive related to industrial broadcasts. The farm and Fensea request to align them with another more permissive directive.
According to the senatorial text, a chicken coop should only request an authorization of 85,000 chickens against 40,000. A Pigsty would go from 2,000 to 3,000 pigs.
But this measure would not apply until the end of 2026, when the federations demanded an immediate application. The NGO, Paysanne and Left Confederation denounce a measure that, according to them, promotes the intensive model and only refers to a small minority of breeders. Stating that it is legally complicated to notice existing thresholds, the Government would like to create a specific authorization regime for farms.
Source: BFM TV
