France is Europe’s largest cereal producer,it is also Europe’s largest consumer of pesticides. Pesticide use, despite the talk of green alternatives, is on the increase in France.. Around a fifth of all Europe’s cereals are grown in France, 18% in 2016. In the EU in 2016 57 million hectares of land was under cereal cultivation and produced 301.8 million tonnes of cereals. France produced 54.2 million tonnes harvested on 9.5 million hectares. (source eurostat). France was followed by Germany (45.4 million tonnes of cereals harvested), Poland (29.8 million tonnes), Spain (24.1 million tonnes), the United Kingdom (almost 22 million tonnes), Romania (21.8 million tonnes), Italy (18.2 million tonnes) and Hungary (16.6 million tonnes).
There is a fascinating article in the journal Science summing up the first global research on the impact of global warming on insect life, both in terms of population size and the metabolic rate of insects, and in turn the impact of the change in the insect population on cereal yields. There has been a fair amount of research done on the impact of climate change on cereal production, most seem to agree that heat stress on cereal production caused by an average temperature increase of 2C will reduce cereal yields by around 10%. What has not been looked at in detail before is the impact of a rise in average temperatures on the reproductive rates of insects and the impact on their consumption habits.
The results make a sobering read. Cereal losses to insects is nothing new, existing losses are estimated between 5 and 20% depending on location and variety. But the research team found that climate change could have a major impact on increasing those losses.
The authors’ models show that for the three most important grain crops—wheat, rice, and maize—yield lost to insects will increase by 10 to 25% per degree Celsius of warming, hitting hardest in the temperate zone. Quoted in an article in the Guardian one of the team authors said “Warmer temperatures increase insect metabolic rates exponentially [and] increase the reproductive rates,You have more insects, and they’re eating more.”.
From the same Guardian article comes this quote “Europe’s breadbasket is among the hardest hit, with 11 nations predicted to see a rise in pest losses of 75% or more. “France will get a double whammy, as it is a top five producer of both wheat and maize. Another big wheat producer, Russia, will see losses rise from 10% to 16% with 2C of warming. Across the globe, an extra 200m tonnes of grain are expected to be eaten by insects in a 2C warmer world.”
The study may have also underestimated the overall impact of insect damage. They limited themselves to studying the 38 varieties of insect the mos damaging. there are many more than 38 varsities that do damage. They did not look at the issue of insects as carriers and spreaders of disease for plants, and lastly they did not look at the issue of post harvest insect damage.
The report also indicated that the usual methods to minimise insect damage, pesticides, using pest resistant genetically modified seeds and crop rotation will reduce the impact but not eliminate it.
The major problem is the monoculture nature of cereal production. “It is an example of what can happen when you have huge tracts of land that are essentially single crops species with one major pest,” one of the report authors said. “That is similar in many respects to what agriculture has produced – miles and miles of a single plant.”
Sounds like a familiar problem to those of us who live in Les Corbieres, and vines are not suited to crop rotation.
The impact of insect damage might also be a contributing factor to the absolute failure of the French Government’s stated aim to reduce pesticide usage in agriculture. True they have banned some of the most poisonous products, although there are so many “exceptional conditions” clauses to cast doubt on the effectiveness of the ban. But the facts speak louder than any speech from Ministers, between 2009 and 2016 the number of pesticide dosages (NODU) rose by 10.5%. the largest rise has been in fungicides, which is probably caused by humidity rises. But overall pesticide figures are rising not falling. If the report on insect damage is correct then the demand for pesticides from the cereal farmers is set to rise particularly in the North, were the bees population is already in peril.
The Macron Government’s plan to reduce pesticide use while maintaining the post war industrial agricultural policy is clearly a failure despite how his Ministers talk it up. Indeed the most popular of his Ministers, former TV presenter, business man and environmentalist cracked this week live on radio. Nicolas Hulot, Minister for the environment went into a morning interview with Inter only to deliver a damning condemnation of the Government’s environmental strategy and energy policy, and resign live saying he could no longer live with telling lies to the public. He had told nobody, not the President nor the Prime Minister, his aids or his friends. Indeed it seems he had not even told himself as he had no intention when he went into the interview as a Minister to exit as as an ex Minister.
During the interview he talked about the key points that he was most frustrated about, an agricultural policy that far fro aiming to transform France’s agricultural production to a more ecological basis was intent to continue the chemical intensive monoculture industrial model in place, and energy policy that had no intention of reducing the role of nuclear power and lastly this weeks announcement that far from protecting the France’s biodiversity the range of, particularly birds, that hunters would be allowed to shoot would be extended, and hunting licences reduced. As well as talking about the policies themselves he also touched on how policies were formed and the closeness of certain lobbyists to Ministers and policy formulators. One example he cited was attending an inter Ministerial discussion on the hunt only to find that the Hunting Associations lobbyist was in the room.
His resignation is certainly an embarrassment for the Government. Not so much because it has lost a leading environmentalist, as the Confederation Paysan points out, see Démission de Nicolas Hulot : quel bilan pour le monde agricole ? , he was actually pretty useless, he gave good speeches but the policy outcomes were minimal.
Where it is embarrassing for Macron, already facing a scandal about his personal body guard and fixer being filmed with a police armband knocking seven shades of hell out of acouple of anti Macron demonstrators, is that his image of being a modernisng and dynamic President who has made a clear break from the practices of the past has been shown to be a lie. The traditional lobbies have the same access as before, policy outcomes may be dressed as radical departures from the past but are in effect just continuations of past policies with a small, and usually useless to popular reserves.
If Macron really wanted change then maybe he should look at opening up policy formulation to public scrutiny. Publishing the sources of political party funding and politician’s campaign donations would be a start. A register of lobbyists, who they meet with would be another. The background of specialist advisers and their other sources of income another.Not hiring thugs that like to dress up as policemen and beat people up would also help.
