Speeches

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to make a point of order under Rule 200 of the Rules of Procedure. Farmers have been protesting for months because they cannot make a living from their work, because they are subject to unfair competition, because they see agro-industry and large-scale distribution filling their pockets on their backs. We have solutions: end the Mercosur agreement, cap CAP aid to better redistribute it, reintroduce price regulation tools and introduce social security for food. Regrettably, this reform, voted on catimini, without debate, as a matter of urgency, far from democratic standards, at the limit of legality if I believe this note from the legal services, only emptys the CAP of its few nature protection measures. Colleagues, who benefits from your crusade against the Green Deal? In any case, not to the peasants, because without nature, more peasants and more food sovereignty. So, before this House does the irreparable thing, I ask, Madam President, for the vote to be postponed on behalf of the Greens/EFA Group.

Mr President, Commissioner, the war in Ukraine has opened up a new angle in the speculative cynics that have been set up by multinationals for decades on food. Moscow knew about our dependence on gas and fertilizers. Moscow was aware of the dependence of some Mediterranean countries on Black Sea wheat. Putin used our weaknesses. The WTO is a failure. It no longer guarantees the smooth circulation of food. It has created the imbalances we suffer from. This organization must be reformed or it will disappear. Our duty is the implementation of food sovereignty. Our agriculture is too dependent on fossil fuels. Farmers' production costs have skyrocketed. Supermarket retailers and multinational food companies did not pass on these increases to farmers’ prices. Let's impose fair prices! On the other hand, more and more European citizens are having to skip meals and resort to food aid, the result of years of anti-social policies that have broken and insecure. Protect the right to food! Mrs von der Leyen, the causes of inflation in food are known. The consequences are visible to all. It is not experts, but political courage that we need to face the problem.

Mr President, Commissioner, the war unleashed by Vladimir Putin two years ago has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. Its consequences are terrible beyond the conflict zone. The WTO’s neoliberal agricultural policies, introduced in the mid-1990s, have failed. They have not reduced the number of hungry people in the world. The promise of food security based on globalised trade in agricultural products and dominated by powerful multinationals does not work. Let's have the courage to recognize it. By multiplying numerous bilateral trade agreements, the European Union is undermining the multilateral system it has helped to establish. I am not against trade, but I believe that the WTO is out of breath. The time has come to build Europe’s food sovereignty, as La Via Campesina proposed in 1996. We need to let other parts of the world do the same things if they want to, and even help them. Europe must arrive in Abu Dhabi with another proposal to regulate global trade, based not on competition but on solidarity and respect for human rights and environmental law.

Mr President, Commissioner, every summer the recurrence of droughts leads us to conclude that we are dealing with a structural problem. In addition, extreme flooding has also occurred in recent years. In truth, we are dealing with two sides of the same coin. By always wanting to expel water to the sea, ever faster, we have no longer been able to retain this vital, yet essential, yet strategic resource for life on the planet. No longer retaining it prevents us from letting it infiltrate so that it recharges natural resources, underground resources, which leads to drought and difficulty in accessing water. However, the situation in Catalonia must alert us. European citizens in Catalonia are unable to have drinking water in the middle of February. The situation is therefore absolutely worrying. The example of the plain of Aunis, near La Rochelle, France, should also alert us. All catchment areas had to be closed, not because of water scarcity, but because of severe pollution, which means that water is no longer available to European citizens. It is therefore time to act – and I welcome the willingness of the European Commission to present a work on water and resilience. For this communication to make sense, it must focus on three aspects, in my view: European governance that allows us to escape from border logics; prioritising uses, so that drinking water is the central subject and these scarcity phenomena no longer exist (while imagining in this hierarchy access to other uses, such as the good status of aquatic environments, access to economic water, agriculture); finally – and this seems to me to be central and strategic – an extensive programme for the restoration of wetlands and natural areas, so that they perform their functions of groundwater recharge and water purification, which is needed to provide drinking water to all and of good quality.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, 25 July 2018: What does the Court of Justice of the European Union tell us? She tells us that no matter how we get a genetic modification, we are dealing with GMOs. Rather than complying with a decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union, we are trying to change the rules on GMOs without implying that they are GMOs. As the earth shakes with the anger of farmers, as we regularly find ourselves facing warnings about food sovereignty in climate accidents here on the planet, or geopolitical accidents elsewhere on the planet, rather than going back to basics, tackling the causes of what threatens food sovereignty and farmers’ income, we are adding an extra layer of leakage forward. Finally, we are creating new dependencies on seed producers through these new GMOs, while farmers and peasants have the solution through ecotypes, which respond to these challenges of climate change and food sovereignty, because productivity is the same. Well, we continue to trample on the expectations of consumers and citizens who express themselves in ECIs and we trample on the precautionary principle by continuing with leaks forward, while fundamentals rely on agronomy to solve all problems. So I ask you to vote against this resolution on GMOs and this regulation, which is absolutely disastrous for farmers and for the future of future generations.

Mr Dorfmann, you tell us that these new technologies will allow us to move forward on the ambitions of the Farm to Fork Strategy. Except that these new technologies are opposed to seed autonomy, to the genetic autonomy of farmers, who have solutions through the ecotypes they develop themselves. These new technologies threaten them, because of the possible pollution that these new GMO varieties can offer. So I don't see how you find these two topics compatible. You talked about the import of products that would come from these new technologies. Should we not instead work on mirror measures that would prevent the importation of these products instead of developing new genetic development technologies in our territory?

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, we agree that agriculture is in crisis. But rather than thinking that this crisis is cyclical and constantly providing answers to the consequences of these successive crises, should we not rather identify the causes and share together the observation that the problem is structural? To refloat this drunken boat with great reinforcement of billions of euros, to hold painfully the head out of the water of the farmers suffocated by this productivist model is only a leak forward. Agriculture is of course the subject of food, but it is also the subject of climate, biodiversity and health. It is therefore an eminently strategic sector and farmers can, if accompanied, become guarantors of the common interest. It is therefore urgent to stop opposing ecology and economy, and make the objective observation that what threatens agriculture, food sovereignty, peasant income, generational renewal, but also climate, biodiversity and health, is this productivist model requiring the massive use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, and not the orientations referring to agroecology. As we approach the reopening of discussions on the new CAP, we must on the one hand listen to societal expectations that understand the strategic role that agriculture plays on these issues, for which we have a history, but we also have the responsibility to use this major public policy to accompany the change in agricultural practices in order to get farmers and farmers, farmers and agriculture out of the bad rut in which they are stuck. Let us therefore not give in to the mirage proposed by the Liberals and Conservatives wishing to prolong the precariousness of the agricultural world with outdated solutions and seize this opportunity to build the future of agriculture and food sovereignty. It's when you're in the red that you always have to be greener.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, as others have said before me, the progress of this COP cannot be denied. After a difficult start, and even if we can regret unclear formulations, a political act is taken: Fossil fuels are the source of the climate crisis and the world needs to get out of it. I would also like to draw your attention to another crucial point: For the first time in COP history, 158 countries agreed on a declaration on agriculture and sustainable food systems. Agriculture and food are highly strategic areas in the fight against climate change. This important step must now be translated into action and implementation will be crucial. So be careful not to pursue techno-solutionist mirages based on GMOs, pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, from which we must, as with fossils, absolutely get out. The solutions, we already have them. They are practiced daily by millions of peasants around the world. These solutions have a name, agroecology. They are based on cooperation with nature. Once again, the EU must lead the way. So now, let's roll up our sleeves.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, European livestock farming is in crisis. The degrowth, so decried by the opponents of political ecology, is already underway. Over the last five years, the European cattle herd has decreased by 4%, or by more than 3 million animals. And it is not the Farm to Fork Strategy or the Nature Restoration Regulation that is responsible for this. This decline is greatly reinforced by free trade agreements and the liberalisation of agricultural markets, imposed by those who call themselves defenders of farmers, but who, in reality, are their gravediggers. Their policies have dramatic social, ecological and economic consequences. Let us not forget that livestock farmers are among the most indebted and least remunerated farmers. The worst is not inevitable. Grassland farming has a role to play in the agro-ecological transition and livestock reduction, and meat and milk consumption are essential. I invite us to re-establish together the production and consumption of animal products, in line with the capacities of the earth – with a small ‘t’ – and with the capacities of the earth – with a large ‘T’ – while paying farmers with dignity.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, in the face of climate change, access to water, both quantitatively and qualitatively, will be absolutely central. It is in this sense that, already a year ago, I called for the emergence of a European conference. Water is a vital common good that we must relearn to share in order to move away from the logic of grabbing for the benefit of certain economic activities. Agriculture, the main consumer of this vital common good, is at the heart of this sharing issue. However, if we are to engage in public investment policies in favour of water management, they absolutely cannot be part of forward leaks – such as mega-basins, for example – and must, on the contrary, support a change in practices instead of requiring responses that prolong the lock-in of agriculture in stale models. Our salvation depends on an efficient restoration of the great water cycle, in order to slow down the flow of water. Water must be retained in wetlands and allowed to seep into groundwater, as only storage can preserve the hope that all uses will be met. Let us be at the rendezvous of history and waste neither water nor public money in false good solutions.

Mr President, Commissioner, once it is not customary, I agree with the French authorities who consider, I quote them, that it would be necessary for EFSA and the European Commission to finalise as soon as possible the methodology for assessing the effects on biodiversity and ecosystems, which are nevertheless the pillars of our hope for food sovereignty. In the meantime, as the German Minister for Agriculture, Mr Özdemir, has made clear, in accordance with the precautionary principle, glyphosate must be banned. Indeed, the French government considers, I quote again, that the risk assessment for biodiversity and ecosystems could not be conducted in the absence of validated methods, although the problem was already reported in 2017. Glyphosate is everywhere in the water, in the soil, in the hair here of members of Parliament, of our children. It is a danger to human beings, to animals, to biodiversity. We are all contaminated. Effects showing the harmfulness of glyphosate are accumulating. The use of this weed killer is indispensable to GMOs and their promoters. It goes against the Nature Restoration Act passed last month. In the name of the precautionary principle, I therefore call on the agriculture ministers to ban glyphosate without further delay.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, it is true that in July Vladimir Putin withdrew from the North Sea Grain Agreement. In addition to jeopardising this initiative, which has allowed tens of millions of tonnes of grain to be exported, its army is attacking Ukraine’s export infrastructure. What a cynicism! Hunger must not be a weapon. It will account for the suffering of hundreds of millions of food insecure people. However, in order to prepare for the future, this situation must lead us to our own introspection. How did we get there? How can an isolated autocrat, no matter how powerful, cause a global food crisis? How, in this context, have we allowed multinationals to make indecent profits? This situation has systemic roots, a system blinded by Ricardo's liberal theories and comparative advantages. But our food is not a commodity like any other. The WTO, by specialising the areas of the planet, concentrating the production of a few poles, has made the food system terribly fragile, vulnerable. It is time to get out of this wandering and give each country the means to best ensure its food sovereignty.

Mr. Lebreton, I speak French, so you can stay at the desk. Mr Lebreton, as you know, I am a farmer myself. And what threatens food sovereignty, what threatens the future of agriculture, what threatens farmers’ incomes, is not the nature, it is not the climate balance, it is the ever-increasing use of pesticides, the ever-increasing use of synthetic fertilisers. This is what really threatens food sovereignty and the future of farmers. So, Mr Lebreton, there is no partitioning. Agriculture can be carried out in areas of biodiversity and biodiversity can be protected in areas where agriculture is practised. And that is what will save humanity.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, when all the laws dealing with the subject of water state in Article 1 that ‘water is common’, this premise calls for at least one central dimension: that of sharing. For this sharing to be possible, it is essential that we take on the hierarchy of its priorities and reaffirm fundamentals: access to drinking water of sufficient quality – it is an essential and fundamental right – restoration of nature to ensure the good status of aquatic environments – highly strategic – and the proper functioning of the large water cycle, in order to recharge groundwater – which is the only relevant storage of water – and to allow the satisfaction of the first priority, access to drinking water, but also of the third, access to ‘economic water’, which is used for the supply of electricity or agricultural irrigation. For this sharing to be possible, we need to mobilise all public policies towards these objectives, away from technicist solutions such as megabassines, which engulf pharaonic public financial volumes in forward leaks and only accentuate the confiscation of water by a minority. For this sharing to be possible, we need to integrate cross-border management of rivers crossing Europe and harmonise public policies at the level of watersheds, thus going beyond the corset of administrative limits. For this sharing to be possible, we must make progress on the emergence of a European water conference, as I called for last September in a resolution, which was very widely supported. We therefore have a meeting with history on the topics of climate, biodiversity, health and water sharing, this common, vital resource that would be the first victim of our inaction. So, ladies and gentlemen, there is an urgent need. We must be responsible for future generations and do everything we can to get out of the desert of sharing.

Mr President, Commissioner, it is now urgent for farmers, for future generations, to realise that, without nature, I say without nature, ladies and gentlemen, there is no agriculture, there is no food. Agriculture is a strategic sector to achieve food sovereignty, but also to be at the rendezvous of history. In the face of climate change, the collapse of biodiversity and the preservation of health – and it is precisely by integrating this global approach that we can ignite the virtuous circle that pulls agriculture out of the wrong rut in which it is bogged down, so that we can finally offer dignified incomes to farmers. Rather than continuing to oppose ecology and economy, we must return to fundamentals, as I did myself as a farmer, based on the effectiveness of agronomy, peasant common sense, such as feeding herbivores with grass rather than with maize and soybeans, as well as restoring soil fertility, an effective and formidable alternative to this deadly dependence on pesticides, synthetic fertilisers, certified seeds, and irrigation. This is what citizens are calling for when the agricultural, food, ecological and climate issues become part of a genuine social debate.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, what this European Citizens' Initiative, and others before it, are asking for is that citizens pay attention to the issues of climate, biodiversity, health, food sovereignty and dignified remuneration for farmers. It therefore obliges us to place the subject of agriculture in a real debate of society, a debate of society on the hope of knowing how to combine the destiny of the planet with the future of the peasants. Debate of society to reconcile farmers and eaters, ecology and economy, man and nature. It is not incompatible, quite the contrary. Societal debate not allowing him to indecently instrumentalize the war in Ukraine and the drought to challenge the salutary goals of the farm-to-fork strategy. The scientific data associated with this ECI chart the way forward, based on agronomy, a real alternative to the use of pesticides. We must therefore appropriate this scientific data to build public policies so that we do not miss our rendezvous with history. And there is an urgent need to act now.

Mr President, Commissioner, there is no doubt that European farmers are facing a critical situation. The prices of synthetic fertilisers are soaring and the possibility of a shortage exists. This is the result of years of misguided agricultural policies. How have we been able to let our food rely on fossil resources and the production capacities of a handful of multinationals? This dependency is expensive for farmers: they spend more and more on synthetic fertilisers in order to reap less and less economic benefits. It also has a terrible cost for society: fertilisers affect our health, natural resources, air, water, climate, biodiversity and intrinsic soil fertility. On this issue, with this resolution, we are once again witnessing the instrumentalisation of the war in Ukraine to put back in the saddle an agricultural model that must be rid of and to renounce the objectives and ambitions, however salutary, of the Farm to Fork Strategy. Opening the floodgates of public money to every crisis will never solve structural problems. This is all the more infuriating as we have efficient alternatives, freeing ourselves from fertilisers and making it possible to no longer feed the super-profits of fertiliser companies: it is about agronomy, agroecology, which, beyond their virtues on food sovereignty, are also the basis of a hope for the future and a hope for peace.

Mr President, Minister, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I would first like to welcome a strong point from the conclusions of the Agricultural G20: Sustainable food systems are the key to food security. I hope that this simple statement will be more audible to the supporters of the agricultural status quo in this House if it comes precisely from the G20. That said, there is a large absence of these conclusions: financial speculation on food. Obviously, the war has and has always had a major impact on agricultural prices. Increasingly severe climate change is alarmingly amplifying the threats of ever-increasing crises. But as with every food crisis, some shamefully take advantage of the chaos to increase their profits. How can we accept for longer that speculators are getting richer when in Europe the queues in front of the food banks are getting longer and hundreds of millions of men, women and children around the world are suffering the pangs of hunger? Fortunately, we can still put an end to it. This Parliament will soon be called upon to vote on the revision of the regulatory framework on financial markets. So, ladies and gentlemen, let us not miss the opportunity to exclude access to food from these cynical and indecent practices.

Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the rise of contemporary agriculture has built its success on three pillars: mechanisation, pesticides and synthetic fertilisers, completely neglecting the impact of these practices on climate, biodiversity and health. However, current knowledge of these practices shows how harmful they are to these fundamental challenges, as well as affecting soil fertility – which is a guarantor of food sovereignty. This brings together both a global approach and a long-term vision. The war in Ukraine exacerbates this, amid speculation on basic foodstuffs, but also soaring energy prices, as the prices of these pesticides and synthetic fertilisers are intimately correlated with those of energy – from which they are direct derivatives. To the vulnerability of this model we must add the economic difficulties of farmers, who are too dependent on these inputs, which have become scarce and overpriced. It also shows the dependence of agriculture on Putin and the fossil-resource-holding powers. We must therefore, for all these reasons, get out of these dependencies, imagine and build post-oil agriculture and regain the virtues of autonomous agriculture, whose strategic basis will be soil fertility guaranteed no longer by oil derivatives, but by the robust responses proposed by agronomy. This is why environmentalists consider – unlike the conservatives, who refuse to face the real impasse in which these logics of another time lie – that it is urgent not to defer the objectives, ambitions and trajectory of the Farm to Fork Strategy, especially as regards fertiliser dosing, a necessary bifurcation if the challenges of climate, biodiversity and health are to be met, but also to ensure dignified incomes for farmers and sustainable food sovereignty. In this Europe built to guarantee peace, agroecology, ladies and gentlemen, is also peace.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, last July, at our last plenary session, when I asked that we have this debate on drought, I did not presume the catastrophic summer we were going to experience. Europe, the whole planet, is now aware of the scale of the concrete manifestations of climate change. Historic droughts, nuclear power plants shut down for lack of water to cool them down, disastrous fires – again this morning in France, in the Médoc –, deadly floods in Pakistan remind us that we can no longer postpone the moment to actually act. So we have an appointment with history. Finally, we must tackle the causes of the problem and no longer be satisfied with forward leaks that only address the consequences. Technological and scientific solutions, such as GMOs or surface water storage, illustrate the illusions of these deadlocks. Restoring nature, respecting its tools, valuing resilience capacities have the merit of really tackling the causes of the mechanisms of climate change head-on. Recreating river meanders, wetlands, restoring soils, flooding areas, planting trees are concrete examples of effective solutions, truly initiating a virtuous circle, including on the central issue of food sovereignty, and are therefore answers that can give us hope for a future for future generations. It is also the way to regain a balanced management of this vital resource, the common that is water, and finally get out of this desert of sharing quickly. Ladies and gentlemen, let us together converge the public policies at our disposal towards this noble ambition. For our children, let us have this boldness and courage together!

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the forest plays a central role in our battle against global warming. Also, capital is attracted by the profit that can be made by planting trees in order to sell the corresponding carbon credits. Before being an economic space, the forest is a place of life, of biodiversity. We don't look at trees as carbon traps alone. The 800,000 hectares of forest that went up in smoke this summer were mostly softwood plantations. And in these fumes, millions of tonnes of carbon have returned to the atmosphere. The carbon farming on which the European Commission is working at the moment can become a danger for the maintenance of peasant agriculture and for our food sovereignty. Let us therefore be vigilant to ensure that the forests and land of our regions are not subject to short-sighted speculation based on the impasse of compensation alone. The EU must prevent all attempts at greenwashing by companies that do not make the necessary efforts to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr President, yesterday Italy declared a state of emergency in five regions because of the drought. More than one drop of water flows into the Po plain, several hydropower plants have ceased operations, more than 30% of agricultural production is at risk and drinking water production is cut between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. Without water, life goes out: Italians are experiencing this sadly now. Droughts have become the norm: no country in the European Union and the world is spared. Privatisation of aquifers, land take, devastation of wetlands and overexploitation of resources are the main causes. Water is common and is now considered a good. Next September, a resolution will be adopted on drought. Until then, ladies and gentlemen, I invite you to reflect, on the basis of objective data and worrying findings, on innovative, creative and effective solutions that would not be a new leak forward, that prefer to tackle the causes rather than the consequences, because it is more than urgent to act to finally get out, on the water, of this desert of sharing.

Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the debate we have here today is really important. As things stand, of course, every tonne of grain that comes out of Ukraine and reaches the people who need it is a step forward in the fight against hunger. But how did we get there? How did global food stability end up at the mercy of Putin's whims? Our global food system is not resilient: it is a house of cards in precarious balance, vulnerable to the slightest flapping of a butterfly’s wings. We are going through the third food crisis in fifteen years. The new structural context of the climate and geopolitical crises in which we are entering obliges us to review this functioning. We need to get out of Ricardo’s old dogmas and question the World Trade Organisation’s agricultural hyperspecialisation of the world’s regions. Let us put in place the necessary conditions for each country to carry out policies of food sovereignty, support the development of regional food stability poles and restore the agronomic potentials too often neglected.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the war in Ukraine has had an immediate impact on agricultural commodity prices and food security. Tens of millions of people, especially in Africa and the Mediterranean basin, face hunger and even starvation. Building food security on the World Trade Organisation and trade liberalisation has thus resulted in increased dependence on imports of essential goods. When ships no longer arrive in ports, the spectre of famine arises and threatens the poorest. Therefore, food security in the Global South must no longer depend on imports of products subject to speculative logics, leading to high price volatility that can jeopardise access to food. It can only be built in the promotion of food sovereignty, which is based on the development of a more autonomous and resilient local agriculture. The WTO must therefore be reformed as a matter of urgency. This multilateral body is unable to fulfil its role as soon as wars arise. The speculation we have seen developing since 24 February 2022 is unacceptable: War profiteers are back. The European Union must strengthen the regulation of speculation. In this regard, I invite my colleagues to vote in favour of the MiFID objection tomorrow. The EU must also tax the abusive profits of multinationals, as requested by David Beasley, Director-General of the World Food Programme, before the European Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture.

Commissioner, this is not a question. I would like to amplify and reinforce my point by saying that substitutes for pesticides are not necessarily new pesticides, new biopesticides, but above all agronomic practices that anticipate and prevent attacks by fungi and insects, for example by using less nitrogen. These are alternative methods that generate true virtuous circles for biodiversity, for our health and climate, and for the farmers’ economy, on the other hand. I therefore invite you to work more on these methods, which are more readily based on agronomy than on molecules.