2023-04-16 10:12:43
Mr. Jean-Paul Pelras wrote a letter to the Prefect of Pyrénées-Orientales
J’« borrow – with mixed feelings, especially sadness because the missive is, alas, relevant and instructive – an open letter that Mr. Jean-Paul Pelras wrote to the Prefect of the Pyrénées-Orientales and that l’Agri published on March 24, 2023.
It would be too bad to leave it essentially confined to this devastated corner of France. The message obviously has a much more general scope.
Mr. Prefect,
It was at the end of the 1980s, installed as market gardeners and producers of plants on the edge of the Têt on more than 10 hectares of greenhouses, we were, with my brother François and the employees of the company, descended into the bed of the neighboring river in order to block the site set up to clean the watercourse and secure the section of the RN 116 then under construction. The level of the wells dropping visibly on our farm, because caused by the crumbling of the banks due to the works, a rockfill was decided, obviously following our action. We then encountered no problem descending into the Têt and even crossing it on foot, without boots, from one bank to the other. A scenario comparable to that of the years 1973, 2001 and 2008 where it was necessary to wait for the winter months to find an acceptable level of precipitation.
Without wanting to deny the exceptional nature of the current vintage which mainly impacts our department, we must put into perspective the use and the volume of the samples a little too abusively attributed to agriculture by certain environmental associations.
Because if, in 1979, the P.-O. There were 14,700 farmers, there are now only around 3,000, with a wine-growing sector which has fallen from 50,000 to 23,000 hectares, an arboricultural sector which has fallen from 12,500 to 4,500 hectares and a market gardening sector which, if it still occupied 8,000 hectares in the 1980s, and is only 1,500 hectares today. For example, we then produced 260 million lettuce plants in the POs, we only produce 40 million now…
An agriculture reduced to its minimum portion because it has been confronted for more than 3 decades with unfair competition that has come to usurp our traditional markets. As such, we have never seen environmentalists get indignant at the border when, in less than 30 years, the daily flow of trucks loaded with imported goods has increased from 5,000 to 18,000. of course, Mister the Prefect, of these imports which these days make the happiness of the distributors with promotions of Spanish strawberries and Moroccan tomatoes chosen by chance to fill the “anti-inflation baskets”. And there, Mr. Representative of the French State in the Pyrénées-Orientales, no one cares regarding the level of groundwater, nor regarding the working conditions practiced in Andalusia or Western Sahara, because it is obviously easier to constrain the Roussillon farmer than the King of Morocco or the Iberian importer.
Notwithstanding these geopolitical considerations, let’s come back to this water which might be sorely lacking in the Roussillon orchards and gardens in the near future if, still as the environmentalists wish, the reserved flow in the Têt downstream of the Vinça dam must increase further from 1,200 litres/second to 1,500 liters during April. Only 30% of agricultural needs would thus be met for spring and summer, in other words during the fruiting period. And this, while the reserved flow in summer was, until now, 600 litres/second with, as mentioned above, a significant drop in production and perfectly controlled withdrawals thanks to the responsibility of farmers, the management of canals , technical adaptations.
The next step being the pure and simple cessation of agricultural irrigation. Knowing that, if the specter of all-out restrictions weighs on arboriculture and market gardening, it also calls into question all the vineyard irrigation projects mentioned in recent years to guarantee the qualitative evolution of our wines.
A tweet published on March 23 by the regional referent France Nature Environment states: ” An unprecedented drought, but a prefect who still refuses to go into crisis level according to the wishes of the FNSEA. » This “crisis level” demanded by environmentalists involves a ban on irrigating crops, including with a localized irrigation system such as drip or micro-sprinkler. Clearly, it would be necessary to let everything die, to lose the harvests and to mortgage, whereas it must face an unprecedented increase in its production costs, the future of an entire sector of activity. The one which, it is necessary to remember, returns 80% of the water used, the remaining 20% being used to produce what is used to feed us.
However, it would suffice, Mr. Prefect, to keep the water upstream of the Vinça dam which, on closer inspection, constitutes an immense basin, like those that activists spend their time destroying in other departments. . Yes, keep this water, Mr. Furcy, to reserve it for crops, those which feed the population, generate economic and social induction, maintain the territory through work. And not by devastating ideals, with givers of lessons that you may be regarding to listen to, even if they know neither the tool, nor the use, nor the price.
The systematically anxiety-provoking monopolization of the water deficit, whether media or political, should not be done to the detriment of agriculture used as an adjustment variable. Wastelands, abandonment, fires, natural risks that settle and thrive where the peasant has been forced to desert his field reveal stigmata that are just as worrying as the lack of water currently observed.
With this difference, Mr. Prefect, that the rain will return, the farmers and their productions certainly will not.
Very respectfully,
Jean-Paul Pelras
Editor-in-chief of the Journal L’Agri
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