2.I. The fable of counterproductive pesticides

This is part of the book “Stéphane Foucart et les néonicotinoïdes. The World and disinformation 1“ where I show the journalist misinforms (= false or misleading statements) the reader. All quotes are translated (by me), except the ones marked between [ ] in the french version (french quotes are to numerous to be marked in this one).


According to S. Foucart, NNIs would be useless (they would not increase yields), especially since there would be perfectly viable alternatives. This is the fable whose absurdity I will demonstrate in this section.

To disentangle the true from the false, I carried out a series of 15 interviews with farmers recruited on Twitter, close to the communities @fragritwittos and @agridemain (which I encourage you all to follow). They are in addition to the 6 interviews I had already conducted for my book on agribashing (Baumann 2021). You will see that the story sold by the journalist does not stand up to the reality told by the farmers.

We will see

  1. that his argument around the uselessness of NNIs and alternatives is absurd (2.I.1. NNIs uselessness);
  2. that it is also heavily contradicted by farmers and their rhetoric (2.I.2. NNI and farmers);
  3. that S. Foucart attempts to neutralize their voice with the second part of the fable: the idea that farmers would use NNIs because they are dependent on agricultural cooperatives and the latter would benefit from it (which is also disinformation) (2.I.3. The neutralization of farmers’ voices).