The department of Agriculture announced Thursday, August 6, its willingness to amend the legislation in the fall to allow farmers to re-use of beet seed coated with insecticide banned since 2018, the neonicotinoids. This derogation is expected to run from 2021 to 2023, at the latest, and could help sustain the sugar industry of france. But these insecticides attack the nervous system of insects and, therefore, of the bees. It is for this reason that they had been banished.
The planters of the beet French alertaient for several weeks about the situation of the sugar industry, destitute, according to them, in the face of the green aphids, almost without fail, the vectors of the viruses of jaundice which collapse returns. The harvest is planned for this fall. But the union specialized CGB), affiliated to the FNSEA, has already estimated that France would “result in 600 000 to 800 000 tons of sugar” less so this year for lack of a solution to the jaundice.
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Guarantee returns
Supported by elected local and national, the union asked to be able to use it again to neonicotinoids to protect plants from aphids and guarantee the yields. “The government recognizes the stalemate in which are the farmers. It should be go now very quickly to be a law, ” responded to the Agency France-Presse the president of the CGB Franck Sander. “The producers are committed to ensure that all precautions be taken to ensure that the derogation is limited,” noted in a press release the agricultural unions in the majority FNSEA and Young Farmers.
” These ads are of a nature to secure the planting of beets for the campaign 2021/2022 “, greet Tereos, the second group sugar-the world (mark Béghin Say). “It is not to question the essential ecological transition. This is to allow us to be the actors of this transition, not the victims, ” says Olivier de Bohan, president of the sugar Cristal Union (Daddy brand).
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environmentalists angry
In response, the president of future Generations François Veillerette said his ” anger “. “France had been exemplary and, here we go “, he lamented to the Agency France-Presse. “We can’t accept a return-back “, also supports the national Union of beekeepers (Unaf), in a letter published just prior to the ministerial announcement. Allow neonicotinoids would be “catastrophic for the beekeeping sector and for the whole of pollinating insects already greatly weakened in France,” according to the Unaf.
This is a “first failure” to the minister of the ecological Transition Barbara Pompili and “a terrible news for the environment,” writes on Twitter the NGO Greenpeace. “The solution announced has been coordinated with the ministry of the ecological Transition “, said to the Agence France-Presse. For the ministry of Agriculture, there was ” urgency to act “.
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“conditions for strictly defined”
In detail, he wants to ” allow explicitly for the campaign, 2021 and, if applicable, the two following campaigns at the most “, to derogate from the prohibition. This will be “under conditions strictly supervised” and “as do other european countries face the same difficulties,” according to a press release. It is only planned to allow the coating of seeds with neonicotinoids. It will remain forbidden to spray these products into the air. In addition, the farmers will not be able to plant then on the same piece of land crops that will attract pollinators in order not to expose them ” to possible residues “.
” This crisis of jaundice weakens the sugar sector as a whole and creates the risk of abandonment of the beet in 2021 by the farmers in favour of other crops. But France is the first producer of sugar in europe. The sector for 46 000 jobs 25 000 farmers and 21 sweets “, argues the ministry. The government also plans to mobilize “as of 2021 within the framework of the recovery plan is” five million additional euros to finance the search for solutions “alternatives are really effective” the neonicotinoids, but also to compensate the farmers who suffered in 2020 of the ” major losses due to this crisis in the jaundice of the beet “. A “plan of protection of pollinators” must be defined ” by the end of 2020 “, while the farmers will have to work to protect against further infestations of aphids.
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