Today, I’m on the plain of Aunis near La Rochelle. A plain with very fertile limestone soils at the origin of my agricultural reputation, with my vast landscapes of cereal fields and my small towns, Périgny, Saint-Rogatien, Vérines, Dompierre-sur-Mer.
>> “We will no longer be able to say that we did not know”: 80 organizations demand the end of synthetic pesticides
And if I’m in the news today, it’s because my people managed to move mountains. But to understand, you have to know that I am not a plain like the others. In my villages, too many children have fallen ill with cancer in recent years. To put it another way: I am a “cluster”, a home of pediatric cancers, like others in France, near Nantes, but also in the Jura or in the Eure.
Almost everywhere, parents are mobilizing around the same question: why are our children sick? Is it the result of chance or is there something in the air we breathe, in the water we drink? Parents who alert the health agencies but remain with their questions. Because the agencies precisely always come to the same conclusion: too many cancers but no explanations…
And yet, the parents do not let go. Formed into associations, they search together and find what they consider to be the beginnings of answers, such as the collection of polluted tap water. They are also calling for air quality measurements that reveal record levels of pesticides. So much so that even local politicians get involved. Last June, the agglomeration of La Rochelle even alerted the Minister of Agriculture. But since then nothing. The ministry returns the ball to the Health Security Agency. Another agency, another opinion to wait.
So all summer the parents of Elliot, Pauline, and so many other children who fell ill, sometimes disappeared, worked together to write a column published today and supported by more than 80 associations. A first in France. Or how the fight of parents leads to a national mobilization. “We won’t be able to tell our children that we didn’t know“, they challenge Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, and ask the government for several rapid measures: the immediate ban on pesticides classified as carcinogenic, measures to protect nurseries, schools and homes, and an exit from synthetic pesticides in five years.
An accelerated exit from pesticides was one of Emmanuel Macron’s promises a year ago, which has so far remained a dead letter. And while the European Commission is setting quantified targets for reducing pesticides and is embarking on a plan to convert the agricultural model which has made me a vast beaucified plain with bare horizons, Emmanuel Macron wants to reshuffle the cards to , on the contrary, to produce always more, to adapt to the “new world” born of the war in Ukraine…