here are the departments where agriculture consumes the most chemicals

These are several departments of northern France, Aquitaine and other neighbors of Paris who are the largest buyers of pesticides per cultivated hectare, according to a national map put online by the Générations futures association and produced on the basis of official data.

This interactive map, presented Thursday January 9, 2025 by the NGO, allows you to visualize purchases of pesticides by department in overall tonnagebut also compared to the cultivated area.

Gironde, Eure-et-Loir, Aisne, Charente-Maritime…

Quite logically, departments with high agricultural activity, notably large cereal crops and viticulture, show significant volumes of pesticide purchases, with the Gironde, still in the lead in 2022 in overall tonnage for all substances combined.

But if we are interested, for example, in the volumes of products classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic, or proven reprotoxic (CMR 1), theAisnethe Somme and the Pas-de-Calais form the top 3 purchases, according to this map based on the database provided by distributors (BNV-D).

If we add the CMR 2 (suspected), theEure-et-Loirthe Marne and the Charente-Maritime are in the lead, and the Gironde is in 13th position.

Relative to the cultivated area, the volumes of substances classified CMR 1 or 2 place the Girondel’Eure-et-Loir and the Charente-Maritime in mind.

“Significant progress” and a map soon to be refined

For Générations futures, this tool, called Géophyto and available on the NGO’s website, aims to “allow the French to know everything about pesticide purchases”. This is “important progress in transparency”, believes the association.

Also read on

This map is available by year (since 2015), but also by substance, by category (types of use), legal status (authorized in organic or not), and also according to the type of association with a danger (carcinogenic, disruptive endocrine, toxic for aquatic environments, etc.).

The NGO, however, calls for the publication of land application records at plot level to complete it. In the meantime, this mapping should be refined in the coming weeks at the postal code level.

(with AFP)

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