Cereal farmers want water reservoirs

“We must build water reservoirs to limit the effects of drought.” Here is the substance of the appeal launched by the inter-branch cereal Intercereals and the group of Irrigants de France farmers, whose members suffer, almost everywhere in France, from the lack of rainfall. In several regions, many corn and sunflower crops burned on their feet this summer, due to lack of water. If all the agricultural land in France does not need to be irrigated, only 7% currently is. “In our area, nobody waters because we don’t have a well. Usually, the rains are enough… but not this year”explains Yannick Ripet, grower of 12 hectares of sunflowers in the Bourgoin-Jallieu sector (Isère).

Still, dams and other retention basins are controversial. This month, in Vendée, environmental activists ransacked water retention basins by denouncing a “policy of water grabbing (by) agro-industry” (read our…