
The issue of water shortages underscores the urgent need to make a success of agroecological transition. It is the dominant agricultural model that must change. Comparing the state of play in Germany and France, this is the final installment of a three-part policy analysis for the Rural Resilience project by Marie-Lise Breure-Montagne.
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When it comes to risk management (climatic or otherwise), farmers essentially have four options: risk acceptance; risk transfer (via insurance); risk reduction (e.g. heaters in vineyards); and diversification. In a phase of confirmed climate change, or even runaway climate change, diversification is the most robust means of adapting to climate change and the accompanying upheaval in the availability of water supply.
Diversification of production, coupled with longer rotations, are some of the tools offered by agroecology to drastically reduce water use in agriculture. Key to territorial water management, some of these agroecological practices are illustrated in photos 1-6, as cited by the Adour Garonne water agency. They can be combined with other more traditional tools for water management.
The Osez l’Agro-écologie network in France defines agroecology as “a new agricultural model, an alternative to the currently dominant conventional model” where a combination of approaches, including efficient use of resources such as water, ultimately promotes the resilience of the agricultural system (Figure 1).

In this third part of the series, we will first explore how agroecology – the sole realistic utopia – took root in Germany (2000s) and then in France (2014-2016). And above all how this Copernican revolution was able to become institutionalised. We will then look at how preventive approaches to major water crises nonetheless struggle to find their legitimacy amidst curative or even palliative solutions. The resource-hungry dominant agricultural model remains in denial about its imminent demise, despite the accumulating symptoms. Finally, we will discuss the way in which the CAP, now back in the hands of the Member States, makes sparing use of agroecology – one of the only possible ways out of the tangled web of climate change.
The disconnect between the CAP (old or new) and territorial water management is depriving Europe of an agroecological path to resilience grounded in efficient and respectful management of local resources, including water. This was the clear message of the agricultural crisis that began in the south of France – until it was hijacked to legitimise palliative solutions to water management.

Questioning the dominant model
In Germany, mad cow disease was the trigger. “We are facing a field of ruins”, declared in 2001 Renate Künast, Minister for Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture. Faced with the state of industrial agriculture in Germany, which was dominated by livestock farming, the positions she took at the time seem to have helped put the notion of agricultural transition (Agrarwende) into circulation. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, leading a government in coalition with the Greens, promised to say “goodbye to factory farms”. Although the reform of agricultural policy initiated by the Greens ultimately bore little fruit, Agrarwende has become part of everyday language in Germany and refers to an expected paradigm shift in agriculture which, ideally, should be ecological and sustainable. While the reality is still far from expectations, over the past two decades environmental NGOs and organisations such as small farmers group AbL (Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft) have mobilised public opinion and put pressure on the government. The idea that a change of direction for German agriculture is necessary has since been adopted by many consumers.
Meanwhile in France, it was another decade before the agricultural model that had prevailed since the 1960s was called into question. The ambition to develop agroecological systems became codified in the Rural Code in 2014: “based on biological interactions and the use of ecosystem services and the potential offered by natural resources”, these systems “contribute to mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change“. French law now provided for: “the autonomy of farms and improvement of their competitiveness, by maintaining or increasing economic profitability, improving the added value of production and reducing the consumption of energy, water, fertilisers, plant protection products and veterinary medicines, in particular antibiotics.”

Three prongs of agroecology
In addition to France’s delay in laying the foundations for agroecology to challenge the dominant agricultural model, researchers also point to more subtle differences: “Wezel et al. (2009) conceptualize agroecology as having three-prongs: embodying a scientific discipline, a social movement and a set of practices. These three aspects have different relative weights in different contexts: in France the practice is strongly emphasized; in Germany the scientific discipline, and in Brazil the social movement. There is a need to develop all three dimensions in an integrated way, especially in order to foster a transdisciplinary, systemic, approach.”
This analysis echoes that of INRAE (French Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment), which cites no fewer than three major German partners in agroecology research: the Universities of Hohenheim, Munich and VTi, as well as the Horizon Europe programme.
On the French side, more focused on agroecological practices, the CIVAM network of nearly 130 associations working for six decades to keep the countryside alive, is one of the players with the strongest local roots and the most active in agroecology.
The French rural network (Réseau Rural Français), which spearheads the LEADER programmes in France, is another player disseminating agroecological practices.
Although agroecological practices are widespread, is agroecology anchored in policy? Before concluding this article with a look at the GAECs (EU standards on good agricultural and environmental condition of land, pillar 2 of the CAP), we will borrow from medical terminology to categorise the various measures to promote territorial water management. It seems palliative measures are still the default option.

Prevention is better than cure
Agroecology offers curative measures to remedy past ills, such as rewetting to recover from maize cultivation. It also offers preventive measures to deal with the brunt of the impact of future climate crises, through for example new territorial approaches to preserve water resources.
Conventional agriculture is still wallowing in palliative solutions. Germany is seen to turn to stopgap measures, with its plans for pipelines discussed in part 2. But palliative measures can have deadly consequences – as seen with the tragic death of a mother and daughter on the blockade of a farmers’ protest in Lot et Garonne, near the French-Spanish border, in January 2024.
In Lot et Garonne, the anger of farmers spilt out onto the streets. Anger was linked to unfair competition from imports, to the back-breaking work for farmers, to the complexity of the CAP’s administrative machinery: certainly. But farmers were also reacting to a report by the Cour Régionale des Comptes (auditors’ office) on the management of the Chamber of Agriculture. Released on 19 January 2024, it describes a tense situation around water:
“The Lot-et-Garonne department is located in a catchment area where water resources are becoming increasingly scarce. The agricultural sectors [in the department] are already heavily dependent on irrigation, a major issue for the departmental chamber, at the heart of its mandate project […]. Lot-et-Garonne has 4,000 catchment ponds, holding a total of 100 million m3 of water. Each reservoir supplies an average of 30 to 80 hectares of farmland. The Caussade reservoir, which is much larger than average, is a long-standing one, but since 2011 it has once again become central to the department’s agricultural concerns.”
The report goes on to detail how construction of this infrastructure was completed despite its illegal nature, and is still in place in 2023. The project continued despite the withdrawal of permission (in September 2018), by the Minister for Ecological Transition and the Minister for Agriculture, noting the non-compliance with the SDAGE (the reference document for water policy by river basin in France).
In addition, the auditors found irregularities in the accounts of the irrigation management body (OUGC), which deliberately failed to show expenditure relating to the construction of the Caussade reservoir. Despite the recurrence and seriousness of the irregularities, the auditors note that the State has been slow to react, initiating the removal of the departmental chamber from its role in the irrigation management body only in 2023.
And now, thanks to so-called ‘simplification measures’ introduced in response to farmers’ protests, it will be even easier to grant permission to construct a catchment pond. What think the auditors, who represent the French taxpayers?

Eco-schemes are the new innovation for greening the CAP… but they are left to the discretion of the Member States.
In France, INRAE researchers have studied the conditions of access to eco-schemes. Their findings show the lack of ambition of the French NSP:
“Very easy access to the first level CE2+ of the eco-scheme: according to our calculations, 99.6% of farms in mainland France meet the requirements for CE2+ certification; around 35.5% of farms would reach the higher level of eco-schemes without changing their practices”.
Given that the difference between the standard level and the higher level is €22/ha and that the changes to be made are minor… a reform for nothing. The strengthening of agri-environment-climate measures (AECM, under pillar 2 of the CAP) has been overlooked.
CAP SPs lacking agroecological ambition
Better integration of European agricultural policy and water policy is often referred to as a good way to support the agroecological transition.
In Europe, agriculture is responsible for around 25% of total water abstraction. Peak use in summer can be 90%, particularly in Mediterranean areas. And irrigation specialists are dreaming of pipeline technologies.
Questioning the production system is not yet an option. CAP requires us to think at different scales, from the cultivated plot to international issues, via the crop and livestock system, the farm or the region. The same is true for water policy. At the plot and rotation scale, some crops are thirstier, needing more irrigation. Root systems may or may not restore the soil structure to replenish it with water. At the scale of the the production catchment – unless we start resorting to palliative solutions and deadly over-exploitation of water. And of course at international scale, with water tables being depleted just about everywhere, which could trigger a veritable tsunami of domino effects.

And yet agroecology, along with its benefits for water management, is currently one of the great absentees from the CAP: “as the vast majority of support does not take into account the interactions between animal and plant production, longer crop rotations, the closing of carbon or phosphorus cycles, the reduction in the use of chemical inputs or the role of trees in agro-ecosystems [so essential for sustaining rainfall levels in a changing climate] […] the CAP is content with the minimum. The emergence […] of sustainable practices has not substantially altered the CAP: conditionality (2003) and greening (2013) sketch out but a weak sustainability that does not challenge the dominant productivist paradigm.”
Not forgetting the 1992 CAP reform from a system of price support for agricultural products to a system of income or hectare support, which set the stage for the expansion of farms and the search for economies of scale. Agroecology, on the other hand, proposes concepts and approaches to provide family farming, which is more resilient, with robust tools for the times ahead (CESER report, 2016).
“Through rural development (pillar 2), 15% of CAP payments are targeted at production systems that take these aspects into account, which obviously cannot offset the other 85% granted too erratically. A portion of pillar 2 payments is earmarked for agri-environment-climate measures (AECM), but the amount allocated is insufficient to provide a significant incentive for the agri-environmental transition. They can only be mobilised in restricted areas of environmental priority: they cannot offset pillar 1 direct payments (area-based payments)” (according to A. Kirsch, J.C. Kroll, A. Trouvé, “Distribution of CAP payments des aides de la PAC et bonnes pratiques environnementales”, INRAE Dijon, quoted in the CESER Nov. 2016 report).
Stéphane Le Foll, former French Minister of Agriculture, is the father of the Agroecological Plan for France in 2013, and of the Law for the Future of Agriculture and Forestry in 2014 (explicit reference to agroecology in Article 1 of the Rural Code). He has railed against the trend towards renationalisation of the CAP and its lack of ambition in terms of agroecological transition (see figures 2a and 2b for a summary of the positions of the French auditors’ office (Cour des Comptes), and the final outcome of the French NSP, which was very disappointing on eco-schemes and AECM).

In France’s Mediterranean regions (Occitanie and Sud-Ouest), the water agencies (through their engineers, who are at the forefront of water scarcity) have tried to make a different voice heard from that of the Ministry of Agriculture (itself still very much in line with the positions of the majority farming organisation), during the regional consultations on the French National Strategic Plan. Their hopes were soon dashed: “It’s a done deal for 6 years,” was the off-the-record comment from officials of the Adour Garonne water agency.
The report by the Cour Régionale des Comptes on the (palliative) situation in Lot-et-Garonne, detailed above, shows just how far we are from laudable intentions.

Conclusion
On 26 January 2024, the French prime minister threw cold water on any hopes of climate-friendly water management, with his announcement of “simplification measures” in response to the farmers’ protests.
Without being an expert on the CAP, it is surprising to note one of the many contrasts between Pillar 1 (not capped in France’s NSP, as the EU has left each Member State sovereign in this area) and the rather low caps on the water, soil and climate AECMs. Clearly, Pillar 2 is undersized in relation to the issues at stake.
If Pillar 2 cannot be used to connect agricultural and water policies, what can be done? It is as if a large part of the farming profession and decision-makers had not understood the effects that the climate crisis will have. What remains is the belief that a few token measures, such as underfunded AECMs, will serve as an antidote to a natural phenomenon that is by now out of control (and, of course, faith in “progress”, which is a little too optimistic, as we saw in part 1).
With the renationalisation of the CAP under way, the various warnings from the auditors’ office in each member state (the only player being listened to?) appears to be one way of getting through to the Brussels microcosm.
More on Rural Resilience
https://www.arc2020.eu/rural-resilience-water-diversification-and-agroecology-part-1
https://www.arc2020.eu/rural-resilience-water-diversification-and-agroecology-part-2
Water as a Common Good .. and climate risks, a common destiny – Part 2/2
Islands of Resilience Part 2: Land Planning and Biodiversity
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