How much agricultural land is there close to residential areas? An assessment at the national scale in France

Résumé En

In 2019, aiming at reducing resident's exposure to pesticides, the French government announced mandatory pesticide-free buffer zones of 3-20 m around inhabited areas. As pesticide reduction is often associated with lower productivity, this raised questions about the amount of agricultural area located around residential buildings, which has not yet been quantified in France. The best available data describing spatial organization of crops at the field parcel scale and location of residential buildings over the whole French territory were combined to calculate the amount of agricultural area within 10 m, 50 m, 100 m, and 150 m (a distance advocated by some environmental NGOs) to residential buildings for 23 crop types. Results show that 0.2%, 5%, 16%, and 29% of the total national agricultural area is located within 10 m, 50 m, 100 m, and 150 m to residential buildings, respectively. The proportion of crop-specific national area that is close to housings is low at 10 m (0-1%) and increases up to 10-58% depending on crop type at 150 m. About 32%-45% of vineyards and 37%-53% of orchards national area, two crop types with high pesticide use intensity, are located within 150 m to residential buildings. We conclude that (i) the implementation of pesticide-free buffer zones around housings may have a strong impact on agricultural production at the national scale because of likely associated yield and quality losses on large areas, and (ii) the large presence of treated crops close to residential buildings requires attention for its potential effect on residents' exposure to pesticides.