While the Ecophyto plan is on hold, farmers’ unions, environmental associations and the respective ministries are meeting on Monday to try to agree on the quantities of pesticides sprayed in the fields.
:quality(50)/2023/09/12/boris-hallier-6500875ad83eb801766215.png)
Published
Reading time: 2 min
:quality(50)/2024/02/12/pesticides-65c9c1da24ba9118929515.jpg)
Discussions between stakeholders promise to be heated on Monday, February 12, during the monitoring committee meeting. They mainly revolve around the NODU indicator, for number of unit doses. It has been used for 15 years as part of the Ecophyto plan and it is calculated from pesticide sales to help determine the average number of treatments per hectare. For example, in 2021, the NODU was at 85.7 in France, the equivalent of more than 85 million hectares treated.
However, it is questioned by the FNSEA and the government, because for them, it has a major bias. In fact, it does not take into account the dangerousness of the products used. If we take the example of a farmer who decides to change his pesticide to one that is less harmful and therefore less effective, he will tend to spread more. However, the NODU will increase even though the product in question is less dangerous.
Another criticism is that this indicator is Franco-French and there is a risk of distortion of competition. The pesticide lobby is therefore campaigning for a change in method, based more on dangerousness than on volumes.
Conflicting indicators
This is where things get stuck for certain environmental associations, because the government is considering using the European indicator, HRi-1, as a harmonized risk indicator. According to NGOs like Génération Futures, this indicator would above all allow the government to give the illusion of a significant reduction in pesticides.
Indeed, if we look at the use of pesticides for the period 2011-2021, with NODU, we see an increase of 3% while with HRi-1, we have a decrease of 32%. For Génération Future, NODU therefore remains a reliable indicator, which meets Ecophyto’s main objective of halving pesticide consumption by 2030.