FRANCE 5 – TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 27 AT 9:00 P.M. – MAGAZINE
AB (Organic Agriculture) is the oldest of the “green” labels, created in 1985 to guarantee a product grown with respect for organic farming – and also to justify its higher price. Reserved for a long time for a committed fringe of the population, “organic” experienced almost exponential growth in the 2010s. On the other hand, its success has led to the creation of many other labels… . This evening’s investigation, conducted on land and at sea, is intended for him. It reveals in passing the protective side of Brussels – for now.
This eclectic overview does not hesitate, in fact, to address the complexity of the links that exist between agriculture and the common agricultural policy (CAP), while punctuating serious subjects with refreshing offbeat encounters.
Starting with these Bordeaux winegrowers, who brew their natural compost based on fresh cow dung on a specific day of the lunar calendar to obtain the Demeter label: “An approach that may seem a little perched”, admits one of them. Or this farmer who spreads a ladleful of micro-mites on her strawberries labeled “Zero pesticide residue” – not to be confused with “Grown without pesticides”.
A lower level of requirement
The sequence devoted to the High Environmental Value (HVE) label is more developed, in proportion to the importance that this label has taken on the stalls to the detriment of organic, which stagnated for the first time in 2021, after years of growth at double digits, according to the AB study of June 10. The reason is simple and very well explained in the various reports: the HVE has a lower level of requirement than the AB.
Also in proportion to the danger. In the national strategic plan that France submitted to Brussels with a view to drawing up the 2023-2027 CAP, it does indeed abolish the aid for maintaining organic and it puts the same level of “green” remuneration on organic and HEV certification. Which, fortunately, was rejected by Brussels.
Another impressive part of the evening was the one devoted to the MSC sustainable fishing label, which certifies 15% of world fishing, while 80% of certified fisheries are industrial. If the documentary gives the floor, among others, to Margaux Favret, director of the NGO MSC France, the journalist obviously prefers the company of a fisherwoman on her Jojo IIoff the Dune du Pilat, with his dog.
We feel the same difference in treatment about salt, between the report in Guérande (Loire-Atlantique) with a salt worker who uses “wind and know-how” and the one in Romania, impressive, with miners using explosives. But, here again, Brussels is watching. In June 2022, it excluded the extraction of salt with explosives and additives from any labeling.
The report not to be missed is the one devoted to Clément Baillet, breeder of Gascon pigs, founder of the Bacotte Farm, in Saint-Sever (Landes), and inventor of the AP label (for Poetic Agriculture). A joke that has been emulated since he opened and developed a direct sales store where he aggregates the productions of a hundred farms within a radius of 150 kilometers. Customers are loyal: “We know where the products come from. » Even if no one has gone around the farms to check, it’s a matter of trust.
Labels: green and unripe, by Baya Bellanger and Floriane Chaume (Fr., 2022, 52 min). On France 5.