France to allow farmers more pesticide to protect sugar output (updated)

Bayer Cropscience

05/04/2024 13:22

(Adds reactions from growers and Greenpeace in paragraphs
2,10,12)
    By Sybille de La Hamaide
       PARIS, April 5 (Reuters) - French sugar beet farmers
will be allowed to use more pesticide this year due to a high
risk of attacks from an insect carrying a disease that ravaged
crops in 2020, France's deputy agriculture minister said on
Friday.
    Environment group Greenpeace voiced its opposition to the
use of more potentially toxic pesticide while beet growers said
the move was not enough and called for other products to be
approved. 
    Beet growers will be allowed five applications of
Spirotetramat, developed by Bayer CropScience  BAYE.NS  under
the brand Movento, up from two currently, with three
applications allowed initially and two more if needed, Deputy
Agriculture Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher told France Bleu
Nord radio.
    This is in addition to ISK Bioscience's flonicamid-based
pesticide Teppeki, which has been in use for years, the farm
ministry said separately.
    "With a mild winter, we have a very high risk of aphids
multiplying and therefore of yellows disease on sugar beets,"
Pannier-Runacher said.
    "Beet is sugar. We are not going to import more sugar
without taking care of this risk, so our objective is to give
solutions to farmers."
    Beet yellows is transmitted by aphids and can cause severe
yield losses.
        An outbreak of it in 2020 led to a 26% fall in French
sugar output, prompting the government to allow sugar beet
growers to use a pesticide called neonicotinoids banned in the
European Union over risks to bees. 
    France had to drop that exemption last year after an EU
court said it was illegal, but farmers and scientists say
alternatives as effective are not ready yet.
    "It is good news but the products that are proposed are not
efficient enough, knowing that we are talking of a risk similar
to that of 2020," Franck Sander, chairman of French sugar beet
growers group CGB, told Reuters.
    CGB asked the government to approve the use of acetamiprid,
a neonicotinoid applied on leaves, and flupyradifurone. The two
pesticides are approved by the EU but banned in France.
    Greenpeace said Movento was suspected by the EU to be toxic
for animals and noted that there was no proof that five
applications of the pesticide were not toxic for plants and
humans.
    France's sugar beet area is expected to rebound slightly
this year, after a 6% drop to a 14-year low in 2023, as farmers
are encouraged by high sugar prices. 

 (Reporting by Sybille de La Hamaide; editing by Devika Syamnath
and Jason Neely)
 ((Sybille.deLaHamaide@thomsonreuters.com; +336 8774 4148;))