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. More specifically, we show here how he neutralizes the voice of farmers to support his misleading image of NNIs and agriculture, presented in 2.I.1 and 2.I.2. 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).
How to explain, if NNIs were counterproductive, that farmers use them? To build his story, the author needs to neutralize the voice of farmers who are expressed particularly through newspapers, agricultural unions and social networks.
To neutralize this popular saying, he uses two main types of mechanics:
- Describe them as trapped on the one hand because of the conflict of interest between sales and advice and on the other hand because of the grip of cooperatives.
- Assimilate farmers who express themselves to “agribusiness” or to relays mobilized by large companies.
We will start by reviewing the overall reasoning sold by S. Foucart, before delving into the question of advice to farmers, relations with agricultural cooperatives, then that the notion of “agricultural model” is in fact very vague. Finally, we will show how the journalist equates farmers with industrialists in order to remove the subversive dimension of their demands.
In general, to learn more about agriculture, I encourage you to follow the farming communities on Twitter (@fragritwittos and @agridemain) and agriyoutubeurs like David Forge, Etienne agri youtubeurre (“beurre” means “butter”, it’s a pun), Thierry farmer of today and many others.