A bill to use remotely piloted aircraft systems to improve crop disease control was approved by French parliamentarians
The law permits the use of drones to spray biological control products, low-risk plant protection products, and sprays approved for organic farming on fields with a minimum gradient of 20 per cent, as well as on ground-managed mother vine plantations and banana plantations.
Additionally, it permits studies to be carried out over a three-year period for other kinds of agricultural land when drones clearly improve the environment and human health. The trials, which are overseen by the national French food safety organization Anses, will be evaluated and, if successful, made permanent.
At the request of rapporteur Henri Cabanel, a winegrower in the southern French department of Hérault, the Senate’s economic affairs committee met on March 26 and endorsed the law passed by the lower house of Parliament without alteration. “Following a discussion over the appropriate incline threshold, I persuaded the committee to choose 20 per cent instead of 30 per cent, as MPs had voted, to save time and prevent another reading. Recalling that the Senate had twice spoken a favorable opinion on the matter, Cabanel emphasizes that “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
