Why this blog ?

This blog aims to share 50 years of agronomy experience in various French regions, with the aim of bringing useful and relevant reflections to truly preserve our living environment. The main topics covered are:

- Promote multifunctional and resilient agricultural territories for real biodiversity and truly sustainable agriculture.

- Better manage the use of plant protection products to mitigate air and water transfers of pesticides and reduce their unintended effects on humans and natural or semi-natural ecosystems.

- Redevelop agricultural territories in connection with the identification and knowledge of waterways in order to limit rapid pesticide transfers, which are the main causes of diffuse pollution.

- Diagnose the vulnerability of small territories and integrate buffer zones in catchment areas to mitigate transfers of contaminants of agricultural origin.

In a nutshell, implement the intra-plot agricultural practices and the soft hydraulic techniques best suited to each territory.

Why this blog ?

I start this blog to share the experience of an agricultural career. Since 1991, I also worked to protect the water bodies and drinking water catchment from contamination by phytosanitary products. I am currently finishing my career in the Irstea in Lyon-Villeurbanne in the agricultural pollution team, which works on water transfers of pesticides and on the integration of buffer zones in catchment areas.

My career in the public service has enabled me to develop independent expertise: I have always sought technical and scientific competence and I have, it seems to me, been impartial. It has not always been a long, quiet river and I have often felt between a hammer and an anvil!

Today, I want to take part in reflections and to be a force of proposal by promoting a global vision around agriculture and diffuse pollution. Sustainable agriculture will necessarily involve soil conservation, reasonable practices and resilient agricultural land. In many small agricultural regions, it is probably worth turning back to the destructions of landscape meshes carried out in the name of modernism and labor productivity and the endless increase in the material size and weight.

Rustic technics of gentle hydraulics reduce the water transfers of pollutants by acting on the water paths. They are simple and inexpensive actions and they can be adopted locally.