This was an old demand of the main agricultural unions. The government will implement “a single administrative control under the authority of the prefect” for agricultural operations, Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard announced on Thursday, October 31.
“The prefect of the department now assumes a coordination role whose objective is to limit the pressure of on-site inspection to a single visit per year and per farm”he explained during a trip to a farm in Morigny-Champigny, in Essonne. This visit, however, will not include tax and judicial audits.
This coordination concerns all state public services and establishments responsible for controls, including the Services and Payments Agency, water agencies and even the administrative controls of the French Biodiversity Office or the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
A measure welcomed by Young Farmers and the FNSEA
Prefects will also be able to modulate “the temporality and geographical distribution of the control campaign” taking into account the situation of the farm and the agricultural calendar, the minister stated. “Today we are laying the first important stone on the path of simplification to where I want to take the agricultural world. “This is just the beginning”he said before signing the circular in front of farmers, union representatives and elected officials.
Simplifying controls on agricultural operations was one of the main demands put forward by unions during the farm anger movement that shook the country last winter. HE “The Young Farmers and the FNSEA, who have been fighting for a measure of this type for a long time, welcome its realization”greeted the two unions in a press release.
“We remain fully mobilized because it is not possible to wait so long for other simplification measures when they only depend on the administration”however, stressed Arnaud Rousseau, president of the FNSEA, quoted in the press release. The FNSEA, the main agricultural union, and its ally, the Young Farmers, plan a new national mobilization starting on November 15.
