Consumers will again be able to buy French tomatoes labeled organic out of season, therefore grown in greenhouses heated with fossil gas, under a court decision which saddens some of the producers. Torn between supporters of greenhouse heating in the name of economic rationality, and those of organic farming that respects the cycle of the seasons, France had reached a compromise in 2019 which was canceled on Wednesday by a decision of the Council of State. .
The highest administrative court considered that the French authorities were “not competent” to enact rules relating to the production and marketing of organic products, already governed by a European regulation. In 2019, the arbitration found under the aegis of the Minister of Agriculture at the time Didier Guillaume sought to sound a truce in the pitched battle between historical organic players and producers wishing to accelerate its development.
This compromise did not prohibit organic market gardeners from heating their greenhouses, but prohibited the marketing of summer vegetables (tomatoes, courgettes, peppers, eggplants and cucumbers) with the organic label between December 21 and April 30. This ban did not apply to imported products. “There can be no counter-seasonality in organic. We don’t eat organic products in winter against the season,” Didier Guillaume said at the time.
“It was an incomprehensible decision, a betrayal that penalized all our greenhouse producers,” said Thursday Jean-Michel Delannoy, president of the federation of fruit and vegetable, flower and potato cooperatives (Felcoop), who seized the Council of State with the federation of vegetable producers, a specialized association of the first agricultural union FNSEA.
According to Jean-Michel Delannoy, this did not reduce the heating of greenhouses (tomatoes grown in greenhouses can be marketed as conventional products until May 1) but gave “free zone” to imports. “I don’t want to be banned from producing what our neighbors can do,” he says. In addition, according to him, the measure dissuaded young people from settling in bio: “Hell is sometimes paved with good intentions.”
The Ministry of Agriculture took “act” of the decision of the Council of State on Wednesday evening. The National Federation of Organic Agriculture (Fnab), which opposes the heating of greenhouses, was satisfied with the 2019 compromise even if it would have preferred “a ban pure and simple”, in the words of its then president. , Guillaume Riou. “The decision of the Council of State risks pushing for the industrialization of organic in France and the decline of the environmental requirements of the label”, regrets the organization on Thursday in a statement to AFP.
The Fnab adds that it wants to “quickly analyze all the remedies that are ours to continue to defend the highest environmental requirements in organic”. An off-season tomato generates four times more greenhouse gases “than a tomato produced in the good season (between June and September)”, according to the French Agency for Ecological Transition Ademe. Its carbon footprint is considerably increased by the heating of greenhouses, most often with gas.
“The problem of decarbonizing greenhouses is obvious, we have to take it head on,” defends the president of Felcoop, Jean-Michel Delannoy. “We all understood it, but it cannot be done in five minutes and without means”, he continues, pleading for the State to devote 25 million euros in aid per year to the decarbonization of heated greenhouses. .
