Live, Duplomb Law, ask your questions: "Opponents of this law criticize it for providing short-term answers to the challenges that will arise in the coming decades."

The Duplomb law, at the heart of a petition criticizing its impact on the environment and health that is causing alarm bells to ring on the National Assembly website, aims to restore competitiveness to farmers by easing certain constraints.
Definitively adopted on July 8 after heated debates, the text, supported by Senator Laurent Duplomb to "remove constraints on the exercise of the profession of farmer" , is targeted by the petition of a student which reached the record number of 1.3 million signatures, thus opening the way to a debate before the deputies, but without re-examination of the text on the substance or repeal a priori.
Presented by its defenders as one of the answers to the agricultural crisis of 2024, the text contains several controversial measures:
- Exceptional return of acetamiprid
The most criticized is the regulated and exceptional reintroduction of acetamiprid, an insecticide from the neonicotinoid family, banned in France since 2018 but authorized in Europe until 2033.
It was called for by the FNSEA-Young Farmers Alliance and the Rural Coordination, the leading agricultural unions, particularly for sugar beet producers who claim to have no solution to effectively protect their crops. The growers fear competition from imports of sugar produced with pesticides banned in France.
The return of neonicotinoids, which are highly toxic to bees, has been criticized by nature conservationists, beekeepers, the Confédération Paysanne (the third largest agricultural union), as well as public water authorities and scientists who have recently warned of the "persistence" of these substances in the environment and the health risks.
- How the National Health Security Agency works
Another issue in the text is the role of the French National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (ANSES), which has been mandated since 2015 to assess the dangers of pesticides and also to authorize their marketing. The compromise text provides that the Agency, when examining the marketing and use of plant protection products, must take into account "agronomic, phytosanitary, and environmental circumstances, including climatic ones, which prevail on the national territory."
- Agents of the French Office for Biodiversity
As for the agents of the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB), responsible for environmental policing, they are now equipped with "individual cameras" . The public institution had been criticized by Prime Minister François Bayrou, who had described certain inspections by OFB agents at farmers' homes as "mistakes" , "a weapon on the belt" .
- Water storage and wetlands
The text also aims to facilitate the storage of water for irrigating crops, in a context of resource scarcity linked to climate change.
Associations have warned against the "installation of mega-basins" , these immense reserves created in winter by drawing on the water table or watercourses, "which monopolize" water resources "for the benefit of intensive agriculture" .
With the text, there will now be a presumption of "major general interest" for storage facilities, with the intention of facilitating the procedures for obtaining construction permits.
- Expansion of breeding farms
On the livestock front, the law facilitates the expansion or creation of intensive livestock buildings. In particular, it allows, during the public inquiry, the public meeting to be replaced by a permanent meeting at the town hall. It also raises the livestock thresholds beyond which farms must be registered or obtain authorization: from 40,000 chickens currently to 85,000 with the law and from 2,000 pigs to 3,000.
Le Monde