Last Thursday November 5, the ATMO Occitanie agency, through its Vice-President Régine Lange, published the regional results of the national exploratory campaign to monitor plant protection products in the air, led by ANSES *.
Without placing these results in their context – exploratory campaign – and without recalling that farmers apply plant protection products, in conventional and organic agriculture, legally and often below the authorized thresholds, their media coverage could not
that once again discredit our profession.
The Regional Chamber of Agriculture denounces this staging and the shortcuts made by way of conclusions of this study even though, as a member of the Board of Directors of ATMO, we had asked that elements be highlighted. explanatory (exceptional sanitary pressure in 2018 linked to bad weather conditions as well as the many actions undertaken by the agricultural profession in favor of less use of phytosanitary products). In fact, we can prove our concrete commitment to this approach, as recently witnessed by some of our Innov’Action days which highlight innovative practices on farms, with the desire to widely communicate their good results in order to duplicate them, or the fact that Occitania is the French region with the most farms certified Organic Agriculture.
So, faced with a media flood detrimental to our Profession, we would like to provide some answers:
1. Farmers use phytosanitary products in compliance with regulations that are enriched year by year, with regard to studies and successful experiments, with the objective of protecting users first and foremost, as well as natural environments: no treatment, prohibition of treatment in the event of wind> 3 Beaufort, removal of the most impacting active materials. More recently, the protection of people living near agricultural plots was put in place with safety distances, moving the treated areas away from property lines and with the charters of commitments for users of plant protection products. These charters, validated by the Prefects, are today in force in all the departments of the Occitanie region.
2. This campaign of national measures coordinated by ANSES is exploratory. This therefore means that it is premature and dangerous to draw conclusions today on the link between presence and danger. We could highlight the fact that the products are found in quantities
infinitesimal (a few nanograms per m3 of air) when nitrogen dioxide (pollutant generated by road traffic) or fine particles are found in the amount of several tens of micrograms per m3 of air, i.e. concentrations a thousand times higher . However, we are not doctors and will not enter into this debate: let science show us whether it is more dangerous for health to live in rural or urban areas! We do not question the potential dangerousness of phytosanitary products, in the first place for the applicators. But this work should allow us collectively to improve knowledge to help stakeholders understand the phenomena at play. It is only on condition of deepening knowledge and without aiming to create new regulations that the Agricultural Profession s ‘will associate with future work.
3. The analysis of these data * shows the major impact of weather conditions on the use of plant protection products by farmers:
• This was well illustrated by the difference in the measurements observed on the Aude wine-growing site between the 2018 and 2019 campaigns concerning fungicides:
- Spring / Summer 2018 very rainy (in particular in frequency) in the Languedoc Basin -> Exceptionally high and continuous downy mildew pressure (attested by the various Plant Health Bulletin issued over the period) -> a need to resort to the use of products of plant protection more importantly for winegrowers in order to save their harvest.
- Spring / Summer 2019 with rainfall more in line with “normal” -> Low mildew pressure -> Low use of plant protection products by wine growers.
• The intensity of the use of herbicides is also linked to weather conditions: the mild and wet winter at the end of 2019 favored the growth of weeds in the spring and increased the number of treatment passages.
• Faced with this, crop health surveillance and forecasting of epidemiological risks by sector and territory, integrating climate forecasts, are essential to help farmers make their decision to intervene and only treat on the condition of a high risk.
4. The results of this first campaign to measure plant protection product residues in the air should encourage us to improve our knowledge in order to better understand the mechanisms involved. However, they should not mask the changes in practices in favor of
integrated protection of crops already initiated by the Agricultural Profession, including:
• An increasing number of farms certified High Environmental Value in Occitania and a strong commitment, in particular from the wine profession in this direction (more than 90% of the wine cellars in the region are involved in the certification process). This certification
includes a significant commitment by producers to reduce the use of plant protection products.
• Nearly 1,000 farms engaged in a process of reducing the use of plant protection products in Occitania through DEPHY systems, Groups 30,000 of the Ecophyto plan, as well as GIEEs. Mainly supported by the Chambers of Agriculture, these producers have reduced the use of plant protection products by 15 to 30%.
• The spraying equipment is modernized and the performance of the equipment with regard to the reduction of drift is greatly improved. We must support the modernization of the farmers’ equipment fleet in this direction. For this, we are counting on the mobilizing mechanisms of the EAFRD piloted by the Regional Council, but also on the mechanisms provided for in the framework of the Recovery Plan.
Agriculture and agro-food are the pillars of the regional economy, an importance all the more increased in this period of pandemic where many initiatives are set up in the markets, within farmers’ drives or platforms online that promote short circuits. Farmers in the Occitanie region listen to the concerns of their fellow citizens and commit to providing them every day with healthy food and quality products while allowing them to live in a preserved environment.
Denis CARRETIER’s Tribune,
President of the Regional Chamber of Agriculture of Occitania
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