Enough to make Michel Barnier fifteen years younger. The players in the agricultural sector welcomed the appointment of the new Prime Minister, this Thursday, September 5, with a salvo of contradictory injunctions. The majority productivist unions, FNSEA and Young Farmers, outline the roadmap for the future head of government “in full exercise”. “Pragmatism in decision-making, visibility for economic players and production ambition for a return to food sovereignty in France are the key words that should govern its action”, they write in a joint press release. Nice, they even published, on August 29, their bill “undertaking in agriculture”, to facilitate the work of the government.
For its part, the Peasant Confederation is asking to be received to defend “an income for all farmers and a fair distribution of public support”. Finally, the Générations futures association asks “a radical change of direction, highlighting the urgency of a more ambitious and responsible policy in terms of environmental health.” Michel Barnier knows this game of actors. He held the post of Minister of Agriculture from 2007 to 2009, during Nicolas Sarkozy’s five-year term.
“We are in a particularly rotten context”
The man remained faithful to his image as a negotiator. “He opened the ministry to associations,” notes François Veillerette, who was already a member of Générations futures at the time. Laurence Marandola, for her part, was not yet at the headquarters of the Confédération paysanne, but, upon inquiry, Barnier left the image of a minister in “listening and consultation. The opposite of the methods we have been subjected to recently.” Michel Barnier was Minister of Agriculture at the particular time of the Grenelle Environment Forum. He therefore led the implementation of the EcoPhyto plan which aimed to halve the use of pesticides in ten years. “The movement towards sustainable agriculture, less pesticides, less water, more attention to the land, has begun,” he proudly said to Liberation at the end of his time at the ministry.
The EcoPhyto plan returned to the forefront in 2024. Last winter’s agricultural crisis led to its modification. Symbol of the victory of the productivist unions, the change of reference indicator to measure the use of pesticides in France. Exit the Nodu, for “Number of unit doses”, make way for an index used on a European scale, the HRI1. Ironically, “Michel Barnier fought for the introduction of Nodu. He stood firm, despite pressure from the unions,” remembers François Veillerette. In the archives of her union, Laurence Marandola also has traces of Michel Barnier defending an evolution of the European common agricultural policy towards a more redistributive model. But 2024 is not 2007. “We are in a particularly rotten context,” Veillerette laments. “We are waiting for a signal which will be the name of the Minister of Agriculture,” completes Marandola. “Do you know when this will happen?” No, we don’t know.
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