A French farmer sprays solid nitrogen on wheat in Happonvilliers (Eure-et-Loire). – Jean-Francois MONIER / AFP
- The examination of the Climate Bill, the last major environmental law of the five-year term, is continuing in the National Assembly. Place Friday in the component “food” and one of its flagship measures: the royalty on nitrogen fertilizers.
- A mainstay of agriculture since 1945, mineral nitrogen fertilizers are sprayed on crops every year to increase yields. But the harmful effects are multiple: pollution of water, air, greenhouse gases …
- “Until now, public policies which have sought to reduce the use of these fertilizers in France have proved ineffective”, points out the deputy LREM Sandrine Le Fleur, who campaigns for this royalty, although the subject divides in its own camp
Introduce a levy on mineral nitrogenous fertilizers. Of the measures currently being discussed in the context of the review of the Climate and Resilience Bill, this is the one that would have the most impact in terms of reducing greenhouse gases … if it saw the light of day and were applied .
“We talk much less about these nitrogen fertilizers than pesticides”, regrets Claude Aubert, agricultural engineer and author of
The sorcerer’s apprentices of nitrogen (ed. Living Earth). However, French agriculture uses about two million tonnes of it each year to increase the yields of their crops. With, behind, harmful effects on health and the environment.
For several years, the Court of Auditors has been asking to increase the general tax on polluting activities (TGAP) on mineral nitrogen fertilizer producers to reduce their use. The idea was taken up among the 149 proposals of the Citizen’s Climate Convention. Will we find it in the Climate and Resilience law supposed to be inspired by it? “Not won”, answers the
LREM deputy Sandrine Le Feur (Finistère), which defends this royalty. “The subject should be discussed this Friday in the National Assembly,” she said. 20 minutes explains why this royalty divides.
What are the reasons for using mineral nitrogen fertilizers?
Thenitrogen is, like water, essential for plant growth. But, paradoxically, “the latter do not have the capacity to capture this element in the air, although it makes up 78% of our atmosphere,” recalls Claude Aubert. They therefore draw it from the soil, where it is naturally present…. But not in large enough quantities to ensure sufficient returns.
Therefore, farmers apply nitrogen fertilizers on their land. There are two kinds. Organic nitrogen fertilizers – such as slurry and the
manure, resulting from the excrements of farm animals – and mineral nitrogenous fertilizers – synthetic fertilizers, produced by man, precisely targeted by this royalty. This discovery, in 1909, of the
German chemist Fritz Haber, will significantly improve yields, to the point that it is considered the most important
of the history of agriculture. “]recalls Claude Aubert.
One of the pillars of post-war agriculture
The major challenge for agriculture is therefore to feed a growing world population. From this perspective, “nitrogen fertilizers are becoming one of the four pillars of “Green revolution” launched in the 1960s, continues Claude Aubert. With the selection of high-yielding varieties, pesticides, irrigation and chemical fertilizers. “
Since 1960, the consumption of nitrogenous fertilizers has increased nine-fold worldwide. FNSEA and Jeunes Agriculteur (JA) agricultural unions insist all the same on the fact that “the deliveries of nitrogen decreased by 20% in France since 1990”, by explaining it in particular by technological progress. But taking 1990 as a reference is a bit easy, replies Manon Castagné, “agriculture” campaign manager.
to Friends of the Earth. “We then reached a peak in the use of nitrogen fertilizers after years of growth,” she says. Fortunately, it has gone down, but very slightly. And that has not decreased since 2013. ”With two million tonnes each year, France remains the largest consumer of nitrogenous fertilizers in the EU along with Germany.
Far from being just a climate problem
First problem with nitrogenous fertilizers – mineral and organic -: when they are transformed in the soil, they generate nitrous oxide emissions, a powerful greenhouse gas
[300 fois plus que le CO2]. Its concentration has increased by 30% since 1980, observe
researchers from the Global Carbon Project. And the use of nitrogen fertilizers is the main cause.
But these do not only impact the climate. “Only half of this nitrogen brought into the soil is absorbed by plants,” explains Claude Aubert. The other gets lost. »A part, in the form of nitrates, washed away by the rains, ends up in groundwater and the waterways that it pollutes.
Another evaporates in the form ofammonia, a pollutant resulting 90% from agricultural activities and whose emissions are stagnating in France at around 700,000 tonnes, recalled
Le Monde, April 8. “Once in the air, it can combine with other pollutants, including
nitrogen oxides (NOX) », And form fine particles, particularly harmful to health because they penetrate deeply into the body, continues the agricultural engineer.
A royalty, the solution to reduce the use of nitrogen fertilizers?
No wonder then that the idea of royalty divides in the Hemicycle, including in the LREM ranks. Stéphane Travert, the former Minister of Agriculture, sees it as a new “Franco-French tax” … Which would break the “dynamic already initiated in the agricultural sector” to reduce the harmful effects of these nitrogenous fertilizers, adds the deputy LREM of Creuse ,
Jean-Baptiste Moreau, a farmer too.
For his part, Sandrine Le Feur returns “To the long list of public policies which have sought, unsuccessfully, to reduce the consumption of nitrogenous fertilizers in France” to justify moving now to restrictive measures. “A kilo of nitrogen costs one euro to purchase and then generates 60 euros in expenses for society in health, water pollution control, etc. “, Abounds Manon Castagné, who asks to integrate these negative externalities in the price of nitrogenous fertilizers.
Not to the taste of the majority?
This is the objective of this royalty of 27 euro cents per kilo of nitrogen proposed by the member for Finistère. “It would not be a tax, but a royalty,” she insists. The money thus released – in the order of 618 million euros – will be returned to farmers who undertake to reduce their consumption of nitrogenous fertilizers. “
The exact and the majority are on a different wavelength. As it stands, the article of the bill dealing with these nitrogenous fertilizers does not introduce this royalty. Its implementation is just “considered”, and only in the event of non-respect, for two consecutive years, of the annual objectives of reduction of nitrogen fertilizer consumption by farmers. “This is not acceptable”, for Sandrine Le Feur.
“Nitrogen fertilizers have separated agriculture and livestock”
Claude Aubert adds yet another harmful effect to the rise of nitrogen fertilizers in agriculture. “The least known but probably the most serious,” he says. That of having separated agriculture from livestock ”“ Previously, the majority of farms combined crops and a little livestock, mainly cows. The manure supplied the necessary nitrogen to the crops. As soon as mineral nitrogen fertilizers were sufficient, farmers stopped having animals and Beauce has become the cereal plain that it is today. “
A model running out of steam? “In some areas of intensive agriculture, theYields stagnate or even decrease, recalls Sandrine Le Fleur. One of the reasons is the impoverishment of the soils when they are only given nitrogen fertilizer, when they also need humus, carbon, phosphorus… I saw dead soils while visiting beet growing regions in France. ”
The member then advocates a return to the mixed farm model, combining polycultures and breeding. “Even if it means thinking at the scale of a territory with, for example, a farmer specializing in cereal crops and his neighbor in animal husbandry and who would then exchange their hay and manure”, specifies Manon Castagné, to the Friends of Earth. She insists on yet another point: “That of practicing the alternation of crops, giving more space to legumes (lentils, peas, soybeans). These plants have this ability to capture nitrogen in the air and release it back into the soil via their roots. “