Duplomb Law: "This text is extremely dangerous," says Green Party MP Benoît Biteau

In the wake of one of the most devastating fires in the Aude region, Benoît Biteau, the Green Party MP for Charent-Maritime, was Franceinfo's political guest on Thursday, August 7. Also a farmer, he reiterated his commitment to opposing the Duplomb law, on which the Constitutional Council is due to issue an opinion.

Alexandre Peyrout: In the Aude department, a wildfire that was extremely difficult to control burned 16,000 hectares. One woman died, making it one of the most devastating fires ever recorded in France, according to Bruno Retailleau. What do these images inspire in you?

Benoît Biteau: This is one of the consequences of climate change. What we call megafires are fires that are amplified by climatic conditions. Beyond the fact that climate change impacts the forest in its annual cycle, with trees struggling to get going, with humidity levels that make forest areas extremely vulnerable to fires, the fact that we are experiencing scorching temperatures and violent winds increases these megafires and makes the fight against them extremely difficult.

With global warming, these fires are likely to increase in frequency. How can we prepare for the future?

We need to work on diversifying species. We can clearly see that, for example, coniferous forests are much more sensitive to these fires. We'll have to rethink forest maintenance and perhaps return to what we call silvopastoralism. We know that areas well maintained by goats, for example, are less sensitive, less vulnerable to fires. We saw this last year or two years ago in the Monts d'Arrée. It was a close call between the forest area maintained by herds and the one that wasn't.

You're a Green Party MP for Charente-Maritime, but also a farmer. The Constitutional Council is due to deliver its opinion on the Duplomb Law on Thursday, August 7. You voted against this law with your colleagues from the New Popular Front. What do you expect from the Council's wise men today?

Let them hear what we tried to highlight in the amendments we wanted to bring to the debate during the vote on the Dumplomb law and which were prevented because we chose parliamentary Article 49.3 with this preliminary motion of rejection brought by the rapporteur himself. I was the chief gunner of these amendments, I had tabled 452 of them, they were not obstruction amendments. We must deconstruct this message which consists of thinking that we did not want the debate. It is the exact opposite. That is to say that this text is extremely dangerous...

You wanted to unravel it?

We even wanted to seize the opportunity of this text for a real debate on agriculture because there is a real issue of farmers' incomes, of food sovereignty, which this text does not address at all. What threatens food sovereignty today is the link with the fires we were talking about just before. It is the collapse of biodiversity, it is climate change, it is not the elimination of one molecule or another. If we no longer have insects to come and pollinate the flowers that bear fruit, grains or vegetables, food sovereignty will collapse. And the more pesticides we use, the more food sovereignty is threatened because the collapse of biodiversity is amplified, because climate change is amplified.

On what grounds, in your opinion, could the Constitutional Council censor this law?

This motion for preliminary rejection is completely unprecedented. It could challenge the Constitutional Council. If the Constitutional Council has studied the amendments, and in particular the 452 that I tabled, they will see that there is another way and that the absence of this debate is nonetheless a violation of democracy on this extremely strategic subject that is agriculture. And then there is the environmental code that is included in the constitution, the principle of non-regression. That is to say, the precautionary principle must rest on two legs. But when we have so many clusters of doubts about the danger of pesticides in general, and for me, it's not just the subject of acetamiprid in this law, there are pesticides in general. And that alongside this, because while we have used a lot of pesticides over the last 60 years, agronomy has made colossal progress in providing alternatives. When we are told no suppression without a solution, agronomy is a solution.

Hazelnut growers say they need it. What do you say to them?

Agronomy has made progress, and when we bring in agroecological logic, we have answers. We have beet growers who know how to do without acetamiprid. We have hazelnut growers who know how to do without acetamiprid. And I invite you to look at who benefits from the Duplomb law. It's 3% of livestock farmers who want large livestock buildings and who want to raise the thresholds on environmentally classified facilities. Only 6% of farmers who irrigate and want mega-basins. When I hear a President of the Republic, a Prime Minister or even a Minister of Agriculture say: "There is no food sovereignty without irrigation" , it is perfectly contemptuous, not to say insulting, for the 94% of farmers who continue to farm without having access to water and who are in difficulty with the issue of water resource management because these 6% have confiscated them in megabasins or not. There is only 4.3% of the surface area that can be affected by the use of acetamiprid. Except that these 4.3% will severely impact vital resources like the water we drink every day, the air we breathe every moment.