Are insecticides accused of killing bees about to make a comeback in sugar beet fields for the third, and final, year? The government made public on Tuesday, January 3, a draft decree authorizing again for the 2023 campaign the use of sugar beet seeds treated with neonicotinoids, insecticides harmful to bees, arousing opposition from defenders of the environment.
This text, published on the website of the Ministry of Agriculture, is available for public consultation until January 24. It will then have to be approved by the neonicotinoid supervisory board before being signed by the government, probably in early February. “The 2023 sugar beet campaign is the last campaign for which an order derogating from the ban on the use of products containing active substances from the neonicotinoid family is likely to be adopted”says the Ministry of Agriculture.
At the end of 2020, Parliament authorized the temporary return of these insecticides, which contribute to the massive decline of bee colonies and have been banned since 2018, to come to the aid of the beet industry whose yields had been drastically reduced by jaundice. The law specified that derogations could only be granted, until July 2023, for sugar beet seeds.
In December, the Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau, said he was in favor of a new derogation, after those of 2021 and 2022, “to fight effectively” against the proliferation of green aphids, carriers of beet yellows, “waiting for alternative solutions”.
The draft order authorizes under the 2023 campaign, and for a period of one hundred and twenty days, the use of sugar beet seeds treated with imidacloprid or thiamethoxam (neonicotinoids). The decree is accompanied by restrictions on the crops that can be sown in the following years on these surfaces, in order to reduce the exposure of pollinating insects to any residues of these products.
Disease pressure “much lower than in 2020 and 2021”
The NGO Future Generations immediately opposed this new project, considering that the information available showed a pressure of the disease “much lower than in 2020 and 2021”. “We would need both a strong virus reservoir and strong aphid pressure” to justify a new exemption, according to a press release from the association.
“Today, the scientific information available to us in no way justifies the request for a new derogation”said in a press release François Veillerette, spokesperson for Future Generations.
The government recalls that a national research and innovation plan (PNRI) – entitled “Towards operational solutions against sugar beet yellows” – was launched in the spring of 2021 to find alternative solutions to neonicotinoids, but that the authorities of this PNRI consider that there are no solutions yet “widely deployable” beet crops, “even if some leads are promising”.