JEVI Certiphyto: What Landscapers, Local Authorities and Golf Courses Need to Know

The Certiphyto is often associated with farming. Yet it concerns a whole population of professionals who grow no crops: landscapers, green-space staff, golf-course and sports-ground managers, infrastructure managers. This is the JEVI sector — jardins, espaces végétalisés et infrastructures, gardens, planted areas and infrastructure — one of the two sectors for which the certificate is issued. It is also the sector whose framework has changed the most.

Two sectors, two certificates

The Certiphyto is applied for by sector, and that mention appears on the document issued.

The agricultural sector covers crop production and livestock. The JEVI sector covers public and private green spaces, sports grounds, cemeteries, roadsides, golf courses, railway and motorway land, and corporate gardens.

The split is not administrative: course content genuinely differs. A vineyard treatment is planned against a field layout; a treatment on a sports ground is planned against players, neighbours, children and a stadium reopening the next day. Proximity of the public, untreated zones, signage and re-entry intervals occupy a place that the agricultural sector does not know to the same degree.

Choosing the wrong sector at enrolment leads to a certificate that does not cover your actual activity. Check it when selecting the session, with the authorised provider — the list of providers is published by each region’s DRAAF (regional agriculture directorate).

What the successive bans changed

JEVI is the sector where pesticide use has shrunk the most, in two stages.

Since 1 January 2017, the State, local authorities and public bodies may no longer use plant protection products to maintain green spaces, forests, walkways and roadsides accessible to the public. Since 1 January 2019, amateur gardeners may no longer buy, use or store synthetic chemical products for gardening.

These two dates transformed the profession: across a large share of public spaces, “zero pesticide” became the rule rather than the goal. Exceptions and particular situations do remain — certain sports grounds, certain infrastructure, certain derogations — as does the field of biocontrol products and products usable in organic farming, whose conditions of use are their own.

Hence the question many now ask: what is the certificate still for?

Why the JEVI Certiphyto is still needed

Three very concrete reasons.

Because some uses remain. The certificate is still required of anyone using plant protection products professionally within the JEVI field, in the situations where such use remains permitted. It also governs buying those products from a distributor.

Because contractors also work on private land. The 2017 ban targets public bodies and publicly accessible spaces. A landscaping firm working for private clients, a golf-course manager or an infrastructure manager remain within the certificate’s scope.

Because the course content has followed. A JEVI session today devotes a substantial share of its time to what is prohibited, to alternatives — differentiated management, mechanical and thermal weeding, mulching, plant selection, biocontrol — and to how to behave around the public. The certificate has become as much a regulatory culture as a licence to act.

Categories: the same grid, different ground

JEVI categories are those of the general scheme. The question to settle is the same: do you decide, or do you carry out?

• Decision-maker in an approved company (DESA) — the manager who decides on treatments carried out at third-party sites. This is the category for owners and team leaders of landscaping firms working for clients.
• Decision-maker in a non-approved company (DENSA) — the manager who decides for spaces managed in-house, for instance within an organisation maintaining its own land.
• Operator — the agent or employee who applies under instructions.

To these are added, for distributors, the sale and marketing certificates, and, for prescribers, the advice certificate. Our dedicated article sets out the boundaries and borderline cases: which Certiphyto category to choose.

An important reminder for contractors: the Certiphyto certifies a person, approval certifies an organisation. A landscaping firm applying products at third-party sites needs both.

The occupational-health stake, often underestimated

JEVI has long been seen as less exposed than farming, on the grounds of smaller volumes. The data invites caution: exposure is determined not only by quantities but by gestures.

The PESTEXPO study, conducted in viticulture, found that the spraying phase accounts for around half of operators’ dermal contamination, with mixing and equipment cleaning sharing the other half (Baldi, Lebailly, Rondeau et al., Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, 2012). Yet mixing and cleaning are exactly the gestures performed in a local authority’s equipment shed as much as in a wine cellar. Work carried out within the AGRICAN cohort on the health of greenspace workers confirms that this population should not be treated as marginal.

A methodological note, valid for any regulatory training: systematic reviews of educational interventions on pesticides conclude that they clearly improve participants’ knowledge but affect behaviour far less — unless they combine several levers and include follow-up over time (see the review published in PLOS One in 2021). For a green-space manager the implication is simple: the Certiphyto session is a starting point, not an endpoint. Internal instructions, the organisation of the product store and the equipment actually available are what make the difference.

Take action

Take stock: which uses genuinely remain in your spaces, who carries them out, and does each of those people hold a valid JEVI certificate in the right category? Add a check on approval if you work at third-party sites. The step-by-step route is described in our guide, and the Certiphyto profile sets out categories, steps and reference texts.