Near the Invalides, this Wednesday morning
“If it’s a disaster again this year, I’ll definitely stop beets,” warns Benoît Gourdain. The 36-year-old farmer, at the head of a farm in‘Ivry-le-Temple (Oise) for seven years, is one of the hundred to have converged, towards the disabledin the heart of Paris, this Wednesday morning.
At noon, a hundred tractors occupy the central aisle of the esplanade. By adding the bales of hay, the crates of apples and even the few cows brought so far, we can believe that the agricultural show started a few weeks early. But for the great communion of the agricultural world with the French, we will have to wait a while longer. Because this Wednesday, the time is much more for claims and a show of force a few hundred meters from the Ministry of Agriculture.
“We change the rules a fortnight before sowing”
“No prohibitions without solution”, hammer, in capital letters, many placards. Several agricultural sectors are behind this slogan, from cherries to rapeseed, including chicory and apples. But these are mostly the beets who make up the bulk of the battalion of demonstrators. On January 23, the government announced that it was giving up authorizing neonicotinoids, by way of derogation, to protect sugar beet seeds, as it had done in 2021 and 2022. France is thus complying with a decision of the European Court of Justice, fallen a few days earlier and considering any derogation as unjustified.
A great victory for biodiversity, welcome environmental NGOs as neonicotinoids – insecticides that attack the nervous system of insects – are implicated in the massive decline of bees.
For a large part of the beet growers, on the other hand, it is the blow of the club. Alexis Hache, farmer in Serans (Oise) and deputy general secretary of the General Confederation of Beet Planters (CGB), already deplores the timing of the announcement. “We change the rules only a fortnight before sowing,” he complains. We are stuck. We are going to sow them the beets…”. But with this unpleasant feeling of plunging into the unknown when neonicotinoids are presented as the effective technical solution to fight against Myuzus persicae. This aphid transmits beet yellows, a disease that can wipe out much of the crop.
Back into the unknown?
This was the case in 2020, a particularly dark year. Benoît Gourdain remembers: “Instead of the usual 100 tons, I was only able to harvest 50, when I need 80 to pay at least the expenses, he says. That year, I lost money. Since then, I have reduced the number of hectares I dedicate to this crop from 25 to 17. »
Nicolas Rialland, general secretary of the CGB, confirms the trauma of 2020 for many beet growers. “Several emergency responses had been made,” he recalls. Compensation for the heaviest losses, the launch of a National Research and Innovation Plan (PRNI) focused on new solutions to fight against aphids, and, above all, the re-authorization, at least for three years, of neonicotinoids in seed coating. »
No alternatives before 2026?
It is this third commitment that the CGB considers broken. “However, it is the most important, resumes Nicolas Rialland. These derogations gave visibility to beet growers. Despite this 2020 crisis, the drop in surface area devoted to beets in France had ultimately fallen little. 402,000 hectares are devoted to it, cultivated by 23,700 beet growers, for a production of 34.5 million tonnes. It is made into white sugar, but also bioethanol or the “pulp” used, among other things, to make hydroalcoholic gel. The CGB estimates that 45,000 the number of agricultural and industrial jobs generated by sugar beet in France
A sector in danger today? This is all the fear expressed at the Invalides this Wednesday morning. One certainty: the PRNI has not yet borne fruit. “Research has been launched, in particular on varieties tolerant to jaundice, begins Alexis Hache. But the researchers tell us that they won’t be available before 2026.” In the meantime, without neonicotinoids, Alexis Hache says he knows very well what will happen to beet growers who have not switched to organic. “We are going to do as between 2018 and 2020, by spraying other insecticides on our plots, which are still authorized and supposed to regulate aphid populations, he predicts. This solution is not better for the environment and it works badly, we saw it in 2020. But it is the only one we have left. »
Concrete expected this Thursday
The promise of Marc Fesneau, Minister of Agriculture, to compensate all planters whose harvest would be affected by the disease is only partially convincing. The beet growers expect much more this Thursday from the action plan that the minister must detail for them. “We need guarantees and details of the full loss compensation system, asks Nicolas Rialland. This will not please the farmers, who work to produce and not to be compensated. But it will at least reassure them and lose as little dedicated agricultural land as possible. »
At the CGB, we also expect France to make its voice heard to avoid distortions of competition. “Eight EU countries could override the decision of the European Court of Justice and authorize their beet growers to use coated seeds in 2023,” criticizes Alexis Hache. Another point of contention: “France wanted to cultivate more green than green by banning all neonicotinoid molecules since September 2018, continues Nicolas Rialland. But one of them, acetamiprid, remains authorized as a spray in the EU until 2033. In other words, beet growers in Germany or Belgium will still have this option at hand in the event of a serious epidemic of jaundice this year. Not us. »
The specter of the loss of sovereignty?
Again, we prefer to warn the Invalides. “The risk, in the long term, is to have to import our sugar massively at a time when we have never talked so much about food sovereignty”. Moreover, the farmer is not so afraid of competition from European neighbors as that of Brazil, “capable of competing with us in terms of the volumes of sugar produced”. No beets there, but sugar cane, “one of the crops that contribute to deforestation in this country “.