The compensation fund for pesticide victims received more than 1,000 applications in 2025

The compensation fund for pesticide victims (FIVP) received more than 1,000 requests in 2025, a first, according to its annual report, which highlights that it had to dip into its reserves in an unprecedented manner to pay benefits to victims. The fund received 1,044 requests in 2025, an increase of 6.8%, most coming from victims exposed professionally and the rest (20 requests) concerning children exposed during the prenatal period, according to the report published Thursday without official communication.

The applicants are 92.5% men, with an increasing proportion of retirees, working or having worked on mixed crop and livestock farms (30%), cereal, leguminous or industrial crops (13.4%) or in viticulture (12.6%). The report highlights a north-south division, with more requests coming from the north, in particular from the Armorique areas (west of Brittany), Maine-et-Loire and Burgundy. Prostate cancer remains the predominant condition in requests.

In 2021, the fund's first full year of operation, it received more than 300 requests, a figure which doubled in 2022 and stabilized in 2023 at nearly 700. The year 2024 recorded an exceptional increase of 44%, to 978 requests. “The recognition of pathologies caused by pesticides is progressing,” underlines Laurent Habert, president of the FIVP management council, in the report, referring to the recent expansion of the consideration of Parkinson's disease and hematologic malignancies.

“Disparate” referral rates depending on the region

“However, it still remains possible to better inform and raise awareness of the fund: the referral rates by region are therefore still disparate without an obvious explanation,” he adds. NGOs regularly deplore the lack of visibility of this fund. The agricultural social mutuality (MSA) is responsible for steering and statistical, economic and financial management of the fund but communication is not part of its missions.

The annual report is published each year discreetly, without communication from the government. The total amount of benefits paid for compensation for damage suffered by people exposed to pesticides reached 25.9 million euros in 2025, an increase of 35.5% compared to 2024. This amount has continued to increase with the number of requests, a large majority of which is accepted each year, but the fund's revenue has fallen, which pushed it to resort to its financial reserves for the first time in 2025, formed during the first years.

In 2025, the fund recorded 795 application approvals and 180 refusals. Recognized victims can then receive long-term compensation depending on the pathology. The fund is financed by a tax on the sale of plant protection products and by contributions for accidents at work and occupational diseases. But tax revenues have fallen since 2023, from 18.16 million to 13.61 million this year. The almost doubling of the amount of contributions dedicated to the fund, to 4.7 million euros, did not compensate. Services financed by the tax exceeded revenues from the tax for the first time in 2025.