France’s Beet Plantings to Slump Despite Neonic Ban Lift
- 2021-22 beet acreage seen falling to as low as 380,000 ha: CGB
- Conditions on neonic use, low prices to pressure sowings
Photographer: Thierry Zoccolan/AFP/Getty Images
Lifting the ban on use of neonicotinoids -- insecticides that harm bees but help control crop diseases -- has failed to encourage French beet growers to increase acreage. That will pressure output in the European Union’s top sugar producer a year after the beet yellows virus ravaged yields and pushed production to a two-decade low.
Stringent conditions attached to use of the neonics--including limits on planting certain alternative crops such as corn and rapeseed -- will prevent farmers from increasing beet acreage, according to Timothe Masson, an agronomist at French growers association CGB. The group forecasts the crop acreage will slump by as much as 10%, to a 12-year low of 380,000 hectares, in the 2021-22 season starting in October.