Given repeated summer drought restrictions in the Loire Valley and Brittany, should French farmers in regions like Centre-Val de Loire be required to switch irrigated maize to drought-resistant crops by 2030, and who should pay for the transition?

Hello, I'm Wilson, and the hardest question to answer is the one you don't ask! So let me ask the one hiding inside yours. You want to know whether farmers in places like Centre-Val de Loire, where summer water bans have become almost routine, should be legally required to give up irrigated maize for crops that cope better with drought by 2030, and who should foot the bill. On the surface that sounds like a question about maize. It isn't, really. Maize is the symbol because it is thirsty at exactly the wrong moment. It needs most of its water in July and August, when rivers are lowest, aquifers are under strain and the prefecture is posting restriction orders. The real question is about summer water. Who gets it, on what terms, and how fast a farming system built over fifty years can be bent toward a drier climate without breaking the people inside it. That changes the shape of the answer. If the goal is to protect rivers, drinking water and the aquifers under the Beauce, then a ban on one named crop is a blunt instrument. It might miss the target, because a farmer could …