French producers are pushing back against the European Union’s Farm To Fork Strategy in its Green Deal initiative. This spring, farmers took to the streets of Paris with their tractors in protest of the regulations.
The Farm To Fork strategy aims to cut pesticides by 50 percent by 2030. The French Embassy’s Agricultural Counselor Christian Ligeard explains the timeline is not feasible for French farmers.
“They need time to adapt to the way they produce, especially in a more sustainable way,” he says. “So they want to adapt the way they produce, but slowly.”
He says growers are asking for alternative options to tackle pests that don’t inhibit productivity or profitability.
“For example, for the sugarbeet production, our farmers expect from research and new technologies, an answer to fight the pest, to continue the production of sugarbeet, and to continue to be, in Europe, the first producer of sugar,” he says. “If they can’t use the banned pesticides, they want alternative solutions.”
Ligeard says the American sustainability strategy is a good example to follow. He explains that in the U.S., the approach to sustainability is bottom-up with voluntary and incentive-based programs. He says here, that regulatory officials want to prove, with research, that farmers can increase production or profitability with conservation practices, such as cover crops, or by entering new markets, such as with carbon credits.
