DupLomb and Pesticide Legislation: The FNSEA’s Influence on Policy Outcomes

We propose to analyze the case of policies related to pesticides, at the heart of the news due to the vote of the law “aimed at lifting the constraints in the exercise of the profession of farmer”, known as Duplomb. This text, supported by the Minister of Agriculture Annie Genevard, acts in particular the temporary reintroduction of a neonicotinoid prohibited since 2020, acetamipride.

However, this text is not an isolated fact: it has been involved at the end of a process at work for two years, which has seen union actors such as FNSEA succeeds in weakening policies limiting the use of these controversial substances.

The Ecophyto plan, symbol of the rejection of the objective of reducing pesticides by part of the agricultural world

A necessary reminder: pesticides are supervised, in France, by two sets of public policies. Upstream of their placing on the market, the efficiency and the risks linked to their use are evaluated: it is the system of approval, in place in France for almost a century.

Since the end of the 2000s, public policies also have been intended to reduce the use of these substances, whose impacts appear difficult to control. In 2008 was launched the Ecophyto plan, which initially aimed to reduce pesticide consumption by 50 %.

A part of the agricultural profession, represented in particular by the majority union of the National Federation of Farmers' Unions (FNSEA), has never made my own opposition to Ecophyto. For this organization, the very existence of a reduction policy is illegitimate, it being understood that the risks linked to pesticides are already taken care of by the approval system.

When the FNSEA takes advantage of the demonstrations to question the Ecophyto plan

In January and February 2024, the agricultural world was shaken by an important protest movement throughout French territory. These events are part of the base, with growing dissatisfaction in several territories from the fall of 2023. Nothing indicates that Ecophyto was the priority object of claims within the mobilized collectives. Agricultural world specialists describe a multifaceted agricultural discomfort, mixing the excess of standards and administrative operations, a feeling of abandonment and concerns about remuneration and value sharing.

In January 2024, however, the national level of the FNSEA, faced with an executive destabilized by the mobilizations, formulated a very large list of claims, including an “rejection of Ecophyto”.

The strategy was a winner: the planning of the plan actually counted among the first measures announced by the government. Subsequently, the union imposed an indicator change for this plan, weakening it considerably. In doing so, the FNSEA managed to impose a very specific interpretation of the anger of the operators, instrumentalizing its political care to challenge a plan to which it was opposed for a long time.

This sequence confirms the ability of this organization to impose its political priorities, especially in times of crisis. Relations between this union and the public authorities were historically privileged, especially during the modernization of agriculture, which opened up to the end of the Second World War. At the time set up a so -called “co -management” system, in which the Ministry of Agriculture and professional agricultural organizations led the intensification of productions.

This co -management relationship was considerably weakened from the health (crazy, nitrates) and economic (dairy quotas) and the 1990s health (crazy cow, nitrates) crises. But at a time when agriculture is faced with the challenge of ecologization, this union continues to appear as an essential interlocutor for the public authorities.

The Dupumb law takes up the “no prohibition without solutions” of the FNSEA

We find this same dynamic around the Duplomb law, the content of which was set in joint joint committee on June 30. This text provides in particular with the temporary re -authorization of acetamipride, a pesticide used by farmers in beet productions and hull fruits. It is part of the neonicotinoid family, the use of which has gradually been prohibited in France, in particular due to their impacts on insect populations.

Beyond the only case of acetamipride, the provision of the text which allows its reintroduction appears to be particularly problematic. It registers in the law the possibility of temporarily derogating from the prohibition of pesticides if “the alternatives available to the use of these products are nonexistent or manifestly insufficient”. This legislative text takes up a logic that has become a leitmotif defended by the FNSEA for a few years: “no prohibition without solution”.

At first glance, this request seems legitimate: it seems reasonable not to deprive farmers of substances necessary for their productions in the absence of clearly identified alternatives. But to look more closely, condition the withdrawal of pesticides to the availability of alternatives has several limits.

First, to satisfy this logic, it is necessary to define what is considered an alternative to a pesticide. However, agronomists have shown that the reduction in the use of these substances can go through the adoption of alternative practices – modification of culture rhythms or conveniences, diversification of cultures, among others – and not only by the use of substitution technologies. Such cultural methods or practices can easily be overlooked when it reviews the identified alternatives.

Second, alternative solutions to pesticides gain interaction with each other – this is what agronomists call a systemic approach. Alternative culture protection strategies are all the more effective as they are associated. However, in the logic drawn by the Duplo law, the alternatives are envisaged in isolation of each other.

Finally, the “no prohibition without solutions” requires defining the parameters retained to decree that an alternative is “equivalent” to the pesticides that it is supposed to replace. At this stage, the Duplo law specifies that an alternative solution must provide “protection of crops and cultures similar to that obtained with a prohibited product” and be “financially acceptable”. This definition of apparent common sense includes the risk of disqualifying a number of solutions, by imposing the comparison term term of very different culture protection methods.

The FNSEA, a key interlocutor for the State despite a representativeness that crosses

This is not a question here of delegitimizing the search for alternative solutions to pesticides, which is an essential issue. Multiple projects have been launched in recent years, in connection with agricultural sectors, to identify and disseminate protective strategies capable of replacing the most dangerous pesticides. But condition the withdrawal of substances to the availability of alternatives presents the risk of maintaining controversial chemicals on the market for chemicals.

Opponents of reducing the use of pesticides have understood this, and made this “no solution without solution” a slogan. The introduction of this logic in law is a claimed victory – for the FNSEA. The DUPLomb law was supposed to be a legislative response to agricultural discomfort. It actually includes technical measures which only concern a reduced number of operators, in particular those who have operations with the most intensive orientation. It neglects a series of essential issues: distribution of income, commercial rules, etc. More than a real consideration of the difficulties of the agricultural world, it appears as a new vehicle of anti-ecologist demands of a union always in the majority-but in decline-and which represents only part of an ever more fragmented agricultural world.

A policy supporting agricultural discomfort and environmental issues will necessarily have to go through a substantive reflection on the methods of representing the sector, in particular the governance of the Chambers of Agriculture.