Pesticides are poisoning us, let’s fight multinationals with our pesticide-free shares of vegetables!
Montreuil, France, 2 October 2026.
On October 3, 2026, URGENCI is joining the international demonstration in the Syngenta site in Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne, in the Eure department, France, to denounce the destruction caused by the agrochemical industry and demand the shutdown of this major production site. Pesticides are a major issue of public health at the national level, at the European level and at the international level.
At the national level, pesticides have been recognized already as a public health issue in France, with the creation of a « Pesticide Victim Compensation Fund » in 2020.There are nowadays more than 1,000 requests for indemnisation from producers every year.
At the European level, the European Union used to be a place of hope with the Farm to Fork strategy and the Green Deal, but it is now a place of « full deregulation » with dangerous legislative initiatives, like the Food and Feed Safety Omnibus package, which is going to be presented to the European Parliament in the next weeks.
At the same time, chemical colonialism thrives, in particular thanks to the selling of pesticides which are prohibited in the EU on « secondary markets », outside the European Union.
The Saint-Pierre-la-Garenne site is the very symbol of this system, a system where multinationals can profit from poisoning the land and the people who live on it. For decades, Syngenta has been producing harmful pesticides there, polluting the water and causing illnesses to the people living in the area.
But that’s not all, this site also hosts the Technical Study Center for the Application of Seed Protection Products (CETAPPS), where a big number of seeds gets patented and genetically modified.
The industrial production of pesticides is intrinsically linked to seed control, and the loss of autonomy for farmers that have been selecting seeds for generations to preserve cultivated biodiversity, one of the pillars of food sovereignty.
We refuse a system that allows the impunity of multinationals, blackmails farmers, and strips them of their autonomy.
Fighting the pesticide industry means fighting the power it exercises over our food and agriculture, but also challenging the economic structures that want to keep farmers dependent on chemicals and industrial supply chains.
The Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and Local Solidarity-based Partnerships for Agroecology (LSPA) movement, through its model of solidarity economy between producers and consumers, stands alongside farmers, and will keep supporting local pesticide-free farms.
Every day, URGENCI’s members are acting at the local, national, European, and international level to counter the dangerous hegemony of food and agriculture multinationals.
Through a system of shared responsibility, we want to support farmers’ livelihoods while building a direct relationship between those who grow food and those who eat it.
To share a weekly harvest is to help make an alternative possible. A real alternative, rooted in solidarity, agroecology and food sovereignty.