“Agriculture has a share of responsibility but it can be the solution” to climate change, according to Christiane Lambert, president of the FNSEA and pig breeder in Maine-et-Loire, while the COP26 opens tomorrow in Glasgow , in Scotland.
franceinfo: Within the framework of the G20, the Minister of Agriculture Julien Denormandie mentioned the bill to reform agricultural insurance in the face of the risks of climate change. Is it good news for you ?
Christiane Lambert: This is a proposal that we have been working on for 10 years and finally it is coming to the table. It was not until dramatic events, the frost, the droughts, that the government finally made up its mind. You know, we don’t have a roof, we work in the open and when there are tragedies like frost – which lost 30 to 40% of the harvest for the winegrowers and 80% for the arborists – if There is no insurance that allows a minimum of financial income then the farms will not hold. With climate change, these events will repeat themselves and it is good news that there will be a change in insurance schemes but also a national solidarity so that the farms remain standing and can produce the following years.
Farmers are often criticized for being responsible for climate change with methane emissions, nitrogenous fertilizers … Is the agricultural world ready to adopt alternative techniques?
He has already started. All the political decision-makers say it, there cannot be carbon neutrality without agriculture. Yes, there is methane, but there are also soils that capture carbon. There are all the plants, all our crops, which are biomass, which generate renewable energies. There is photovoltaics on the roofs. Agriculture has a part of the responsibility, we do not deny it, but we bring a lot of solutions besides to polluting and polluting sectors. Today, for example, we sell carbon credits to companies that emit carbon. We capture it in our crops, in our forests, in our fields. So we must present agriculture as a cause but also as a solution.
A decree on glyphosate was released today proposing a tax credit to get out of it. Is this a good incentive?
It will not cover the full cost for all farms that want to get out of glyphosate. What is positive is that the state measured that stopping glyphosate was a hasty decision, it went back by saying that when there is no alternative, you have to be able to use anyway. This is the case in soil conservation agriculture, in sloping vineyards and orchards, for certain crops of seeds or nuts and hazelnuts. To ban everything if there are no other solutions is a dead end. The government is finally returning to a principle of reality.