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food distributors such as Carrefour, to set up non-GM
soybean production chains in the USA and Brazil (Lorelle,
1999a).
In addition to Glon-Sanders’ poultry and eggs, labelled as
‘biologically produced’ and qualified as high-quality and
rather expensive products, French consumers could buy
another type of product labelled ‘soja du pays’. But for this
kind of poultry, fed with non-GMOs and offering a good
safety, the consumer had to pay more (Lorelle, 1999a).
8.7 Fraud
Biological agriculture is not free from criticism because of
fraud. By early 2000, in France, the agriculture ministry’s
Directorate-General for Competition, Consumption and
Fraud Repression carried out an enquiry on false biological
cereals. About a dozen important operators were involved
in the following traffic: a dealer buys conventional cereals
and establishes forged certificates that qualify them as
derived from biological agriculture; the cereals are sold
as ‘bio’ products either to feed producers or directly to
livestock raisers. As the selling price of ‘bio’ cereals could
be twofold of that of conventional cereals, the illegal profit
could vary from 1 Franc to 50 centimes per kilo, and because
of the volumes concerned the benefits could be very high.
The French authorities discovered an international network
involving in particular Italian capital. Conventional cereals
were sometimes purchased in France and shipped – really
or virtually – to Italy, Belgium or the Netherlands, from
where they returned with the ‘bio’ label. Another traffic
was initiated in Central Europe, particularly in Romania or
Ukraine, and the cereals were transferred to France. On 23
March 2000, the French inspectors spotted a society based
in Brittany (Carhaix), Eurograin, which they suspected of
having marketed 50,000 tons of cereals of doubtful origin
in 1998 and 1999. Earlier, on 3 March 2000, a public enquiry
had been opened in the Vienne Department regarding
12,000 tons of cereals commercialized by Bio Alliance, a
company based in Chasseneuil-du-Poitou. Its manager was
condemned for having unduly used a ‘bio’ label on bovine
meat. Another enquiry concerned the shipment of the
Celtic Ambassador, a boat inspected in 1997 in Bordeaux;
the 4,500 tons of cereals found in the boat officially
originated from Romania, and had been certified ‘bio’ in the
Netherlands. The enquiry showed that the shipment had
been made at Fos-sur-Mer, in the southeast of France, and
that the cereals were conventional French ones (Hopquin,
2000a).
Similar trafficking may crop up. It underlines the limitations
of the certifying bodies, in charge of controlling the
fulfilment of biological agriculture requisites through two
annual visits without warning. There were three certifying
organisms in France. The most important one, Ecocert,
covered 80 per cent of the market; by mid-1999, it was
able to detect pesticide traces in animal feed produced by
Central Soya, a neighbour and client of Eurograin. Ecocert
then alerted the certifying organism of Eurograin, Afaq-
Ascert, which had been controlling this company since 1998.
Many officials have recommended the stricter enforcement
of biological agriculture requisites, considered as too loose
(Hopquin, 2000a).
Fraud and the subsequent mistrust could also explain
the relative slump in the consumption of ‘bio’ products.
Another explanation of this decrease is the competition
among quality labels as well as the trend toward a more
environment-friendly agriculture (‘rational’ agriculture’)
that may kidnap the image relating to organic farming
(Dupont, 2001).
8.8 ‘Rational’ agriculture
“Rational” agriculture’s goal is to make a compromise
between productivity and environment conservation. In
France, the terms of reference of this mode of agricultural
production contain 98 points relating to the improvement
of agricultural practices (better use of pesticides and
recycling of wastes, improvement of sanitation, precise
recording of farmer’s practices, better prevention of animal
diseases) and upkeep of farm economic profitability
(Dupont, 2003).
A key issue of conventional agriculture is the better and
more effective use of fertilizers by crops. Increasing the
absorption and assimilation of macronutrients such
as nitrogen fertilizers would therefore contribute to
decreasing the percentage of these fertilizers not used by
plants and therefore to drastically reduce soil and water
pollution by nitrogen compounds. In this regard the work
by Shuichi Yanagisawa and colleagues of the Universities
of Okayama and Tokyo, published in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on 18 May 2004
could be very promising. The Japanese researchers were
able to incorporate into the genome of Arabidopsis thaliana
a gene from maize that improves nitrogen assimilation
in this crop species. The gene transferred, Dof1, does not
only control the synthesis of a protein, but also a series
of genetic regulations involved in the constitution of the
plant’s ‘skeleton’. In Arabidopsis thaliana, indeed, Dof1
has modified the expression of several genes: amino-acid
concentration has increased, that of glucose was lowered
compared with control plants, but not that of sucrose. But
the most striking modification concerned the growth of the
transgenic plants in an environment with limited amounts
of nitrogen: control plants showed symptoms of deficiency
such as blemished leaves, while transgenic plants looked
normal. As a follow-up to the experiment on Arabidopsis
thaliana, Dof1 has been transferred to potato plants by
the Japanese workers; as a result, the amount of amino
acids in the genetically modified plants increased. This
result is promising, because potatoes are not very efficient
in absorbing and assimilating nitrogen compounds;
henceforth the need to add such fertilizers to this crop
(Morin, 2004).
Increasing biological nitrogen fixation (instead of nitrogen
fertilizer inputs) is also an objective of ‘rational’ agriculture.
Legumes are able to fix atmospheric nitrogen thanks to
symbiotic bacteria living in their root nodules (Rhizobium)
and they need much less nitrogen fertilizers than other
crop species. An international consortium is carrying out
the sequencing of the genome of the annual alfalfa species,
Medicago truncatula, considered as a model legume. This
genomics work is to be finalized in 2007, but preliminary
results already showed that the genomes of legumes were