Let’s save lucerne!

For the attention of Mr. Dacian Ciolos, EU Commissioner for Agriculture


Dear Sir,

As you know and you have yourself confirmed, agriculture plays a key role for producing public resources, such as the countryside, biodiversity and high-quality soil. In the specific case of the large-scale crops that occupy an extensive part of the agricultural areas in Europe, protection of the environment in particular requires longer rotations.

Lucerne is one of these crops that can be perfectly grown between two cereal crops. It naturally obtains nitrogen from the air and absorbs surplus nitrates in the soil. It has a very low need for pesticides and covers the ground the whole year round, so lucerne implies a real break for ecology. Lucerne also provides European livestock with high quality proteins grown near them. If lucerne were to disappear from our lands it would lead to a decrease in the quality of water, soil would be more exposed to erosion, biodiversity would suffer and there would be greater use of fertilisers and pesticides. Our current 75% loss in proteins would become even more serious.

We hence ask you, Commissioner, to propose sustainable and effective measures to the European Council that will save lucerne from the 2012 harvest:

. The dried fodder CMO should be postponed until 31 March 2014

. Remuneration for the significant environmental service that it provides: high quality drinking water, conservation of biodiversity, protection of the countryside, soil protection.

. A long-term commitment, since lucerne is a multi-annual crop

. A level of compensation to keep the economic appeal of lucerne compared with other large-scale crops

We therefore ask you, Commissioner, as the person responsible for the common agricultural reform policy, to take our request into consideration and adopt the required measures so that the lucerne crop will be strongly promoted in the future Common Agricultural Policy.

Yours sincerely,

J.P Verzeau,
“Let’s save lucerne” group coordinator