In a field in western France, the small purple and white flowers growing among tender shoots of wheat are a clue that this is not conventional single-crop farmland.
The whole area is part of scientific work to help farmers cut down on their use of pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers.
“I felt that these products were dangerous,” farmer David Bonneau said as he hunched over the little wildflowers — veronica and hickweed, adding that “the general public is asking for reductions.”
Photo: Reuters
One of his experimental plots is treated the standard way, with chemical weedkiller; another he weeds mechanically with a harrow whose teeth tear up the wild plants; while a third is not treated at all. He is part of a project involving 400 farms and about 40 villages in the Deux-Sevres region of western France, where scientists are experimenting with different techniques to reduce pollution.
Researchers from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) support volunteer farmers to reduce the use of pesticides — probable sources of cancer and fatal to birds — as well as water-polluting chemical fertilizers, the prices of which are exploding.
While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has raised the specter of food shortages, policymakers in Europe should not waver in their commitment to green agriculture, experts say.
Protecting nature, a central task of biodiversity negotiations taking place in Geneva, Switzerland, is also a matter of safeguarding the water we drink, the food we eat and the air we breathe.
“It’s important from a political point of view to show long-term engagement,” said Robert Finger, chairman of ETH Zurich’s World Food System Center.
Going greener could even be more profitable.
“In many parts of the world, we are at a point where fertilizer use is very inefficient in terms of additional yield,” Finger said, referring to Europe and parts of Asia.
Excessive use of fertilizers or pesticides can affect small and large crops.
Meanwhile, World Vegetable Center researcher Pepijn Schreinemachers said that farmers in countries such as Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam are misusing pesticides with potentially harmful consequences.
“It is important to realize that it is farmers themselves who are most affected by the misuse of agrochemicals,” he said.
This could be using too much of a chemical, unsafe technique or the use of the wrong products.
“Every farmer can share details about pesticide-poisoning incidents they have experienced, ranging from skin rashes to vomiting and unconsciousness. Still, most farmers strongly believe that pesticides are necessary for farm production,” Schreinemachers said.
So how can farmers be persuaded to change? Finger believes farming needs to have a middle way, between full organic farming and chemical-heavy conventional agriculture.
“The most important point is that the farmers have an option to do something different,” he said.
Clear, long-term public policies should help support the development of new technologies, as well as investment in pesticide-free production and techniques such as growing legumes among crops to reduce the need for fertilizers, he said, adding that costs of pesticides and fertilizers should properly reflect the damage they can do.
To help farmers overcome worries about making a switch, CNRS researchers are considering a mutual fund that would compensate them in the event of losses linked to the reduction of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, a model that already exists in Italy.
Bonneau has seen savings so far on the costs of buying weedkiller and equipment. When he made his first attempts at ditching the chemicals, he used his neighbor’s machinery. Since then, a more efficient device has been purchased by the agricultural cooperative.
However, the proof will come at harvest time, when researchers measure the wheat yields of each of the plots to find out the impact of the herbicide reduction.
In Deux-Sevres, “we have demonstrated that conventional farmers can reduce nitrogen and pesticides by a third without loss of yield, while increasing their income because they lower their costs,” CNRS research director Vincent Bretagnolle said.
However, changing behavior long term is another challenge.
“Even the farmers who participated in the experiment and saw the results with their own eyes did not noticeably change their practices,” Bretagnolle said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
ACCESS DISPUTE: The blast struck a house, and set cars and tractors alight, with the fires wrecking several other structures and cutting electricity An explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a one-year-old, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early on Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of a territorial dispute between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal. The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups disputed access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 150km northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Colonel Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area. Agudo had initially reported six people killed,
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
The US government has banned US government personnel in China, as well as family members and contractors with security clearances, from any romantic or sexual relationships with Chinese citizens, The Associated Press (AP) has learned. Four people with direct knowledge of the matter told the AP about the policy, which was put into effect by departing US ambassador Nicholas Burns in January shortly before he left China. The people would speak only on condition of anonymity to discuss details of a confidential directive. Although some US agencies already had strict rules on such relationships, a blanket “nonfraternization” policy, as it is known, has
RSS