For the second time in three years, ENDURE communication team leader Philippe Delval has hit the roads of France to conduct a series of special days dedicated to sharing the latest knowledge on alternative crop protection techniques with those responsible for providing the training required to obtain the obligatory certification needed to handle pesticides in the country.
Philippe and his colleague Mallorie Durier work for ACTA, which heads up 15 different agricultural technical institutes across France and has been appointed by the Ministry of Agriculture to deliver the training, which is part of the country’s ambitious Ecophyto plan to reduce pesticide use by 50%.
Since Philippe’s first Certiphyto ‘world tour’ (read more here), a new online training course has been added to the dedicated training platform offering trainers the opportunity to further develop their skills through modules focusing on different systems (arable crops, grapevine, fruit production etc.) alongside compulsory modules on the resources available, pollinators and advanced biocontrol.
ENDURE joined Philippe and Mallorie at a day dedicated to grapevine production in the town of Carpentras in southern France to gain an insight into the French approach to reducing pesticide use through the greater use of alternative techniques and more emphasis on agro-ecological approaches.
The 22 thematic days follow a similar formula, with Philippe first familiarising attendees (representatives from Chambers of Agriculture, technical institutes, INRA etc.) with the approach adopted in Certiphyto training. This includes the provision of many resources, including information on the regulatory situation, the DEPHY demonstration farm network which is building references for farmers seeking to adopt systems which are more parsimonious in their pesticide use and the boitagri.com website, which details effective and sustainable agricultural practices.
These resources continue to expand, with Philippe telling the audience at the Louis Giraud agricultural college about recent additions. These include Herbea, a website developed by Solagro to encourage biological control and exploit the synergies between agriculture and biodiversity. Step-by-step, it takes users through a choice of scale, crop and insect pest before providing a suggestion of plants and other agro-ecological infrastructure which can be introduced to encourage the presence of beneficial insects.
On the subject of agro-ecological infrastructure, an education kit from France’s Biodiversity and Agriculture Combined Technology Network now includes a game which allows participants to explore the complexity and diversity of consequences at the field, farm and territorial scales arising from the introduction of such infrastructure. Aimed at agricultural students, advisers and community groups, it is designed to aid collective thinking on landscape management and the development of shared goals.
In a similar vein, RAD –CIVAM Haut Bocage have developed a collective intelligence tool for building low-input cropping systems which is designed for advisers and technicians working with farmers and for teachers working with agricultural students.
Of particular interest to the Carpentras audience were details of a project led by the French Wine and Vine Institute (IFV) and France’s National Institute of Origin and Quality (Institut national de l'origine et de la qualité or INAO) to bring together all the available information on agro-ecology in grape production in one single guide. The guide is being presented at a series of trade events this year and will be used as a teaching tool, as well as a tool for constructing agro-ecological strategies.
Learning from innovative farmers
The Certiphyto thematic days also offer attendees the opportunity to catch up with developments in the DEPHY farm demonstration network, which now numbers 3,000 farms brought together in 245 groups, and the experimental work being conducted to support Ecophyto, alongside a visit to the hosting institute. In Carpentras, for example, Claire Fersing, from the Vaucluse Chamber of Agriculture, presented an update on the results from the DEPHY farm network, alongside a more detailed look at the group of table grape producers she coordinates.
This group, which now numbers 12 producers, first began working together some five years ago, with each producer defining their own input-reduction project according to a strategy which begins pre-treatment, with the introduction of preventative methods (such as pruning) and the verification of spraying equipment. Careful decision-making is then used (test plots, trapping, observations and bulletins) and reduced doses (early and late in the season) are applied, with some producers using Optidose to further optimise their treatments. This approach is then supported by the substitution of treatments with alternative approaches such as tillage or grass strips as an alternative to chemical weeding and the use of biocontrol (Bt and mating disruption).
Proof of this approach’s efficacy can be seen in a 24% reduction in the average Treatment Frequency Index (TFI) across the group, with seven out of the original eight members reducing their TFI, the exception being a producer with a relatively low TFI for table grapes at the start of the process. Beyond the reduction of pesticide use, producers have also been working on replacing the most toxic products with less toxic choices, avoiding wherever possible the use of carcinogenic, mutagenic and reprotoxic (CMR) substances.
The 40-hectare Saint Victor farm which forms part of the Louis Giraud agricultural college is part of Claire’s group and has, for example, introduced multi-species hedges and flower strips to encourage beneficial insects. Attendees were able to see this for themselves during a guided tour of the farm with its director, Isabelle Pelegrin.
Among other things, the farm has installed netting systems for protection against moth damage in apple and cherry crops and has established its own boutique to sell local produce. The farm includes 8 hectares of AOP Ventoux vines, in addition to apple, apricot cherry, table grape and barley production, and also participates in research projects. For example, it is a demonstration site for the Life-Phytobarre project, which uses photosynthetic bacteria to treat plant protection product effluents (pictured right).
What research can tell us about low-input viticulture
Closing the day, Raphaël Metral, from Montpellier SupAgro, brought attendees up to date with the work being conducted in DEPHY’s Ecoviti experimental work, which comprises 27 sites in France’s world famous wine-producing areas such as the Loire Valley and Bordeaux. Societal pressure is high to reduce pesticide use, said Raphaël, because of the presence of residues in streams and rivers and pesticide use remains high, with a TFI averaging 14.7. Some 80% of pesticide use in viticulture concerns fungicides, with 96% of fungicides designed to control downy and powdery mildew, though Raphaël pointed out, many of these treatments serve no purpose as the disease is not present in the grapes at the time of spraying.
Following a series of workshops bringing together researchers, experts and advisers, Ecoviti identified 48 prototype innovative grapevine systems , ranked into groups ranging from more efficient use of pesticides with innovative decision-making rules (E1), plus levers to mitigate pest pressure (E2), plus the substitution of treatments with biocontrol (ES) through to complete redesign based on resistant varieties (ESR).
Subsequent experimentation has provided interesting results, with all four types of innovative system producing major decreases in TFI compared to the regional average. The biggest reduction was, unsurprisingly, in ESR systems (a reduction of 95%), while even E1 systems reduced TFI by an average of 49%.
While Ecoviti has shown that meeting the Ecophyto objective of a 50% reduction in pesticide use is possible, the experimental systems have also been assessed according to other important criteria: yield, quality and working time required. Such multi-criteria evaluations have again proved positive, with two-thirds of the systems being awarded a score of at least four (five being the highest) and one-third being advantageous for all three criteria.
With regards to transferring these methods to professional grapevine producers, Raphaël stressed the importance of the adaptation that will be required to take them from the field scale to the farm scale, the importance of the DEPHY farm network in demonstrating how management of risk is possible and the adaptation of decision-making rules to the real-life work of grapevine producers.
The DEPHY EXPE network will continue to work on the incorporation of agro-ecology, the use of genetic resistance, the management of secondary parasites and the integration of new technologies. Version 2 of DEPHY EXPE will be seeking to prove that the concept of agro-ecology can be applied to viticulture, but Raphaël posed some interesting questions in closing his presentation: Can we envisage vines that no longer need to be treated? Could we manage an agro-system using only biocontrol and natural regulation? And how long will resistant varieties remain so?
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