The anger of farmers does not weaken, despite the meeting on Monday evening between the FNSEA, the Young Farmers, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and the Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau.
At the end of this meeting, the FNSEA warned: there will be “
no lifting of actions carried out on the ground”
without
“concrete decisions”.
And the brutal death of a farmer at a blockage point, killed by a ramming car trying to force a blockade in Pamiers (Ariège) this Tuesday morning, is not likely to attenuate the conflagration.
At the origin of the movement, multiple demands.
Le Figaro
takes stock of the 10 main reasons for the anger of French farmers, some of which differ from one region to another.
Seven demands of national scope:
1. Better pay
Despite the establishment of the Estates General of Food aimed at protecting the remuneration of farmers and the laws which followed (Egalim 1,2,3), the improvement was only short-lived.
In 2021 and 2022, the prices of agricultural products certainly increased, but they started to fall again in 2023. According to INSEE, incomes have fallen by 40% in 30 years.
And one in five farmers lives below the poverty line.
Farmers have the feeling of being used as an adjustment variable in the annual commercial negotiations between large retailers and agri-food manufacturers - which end at the end of January.
Farmers criticize processors for not passing on the price increases they obtained on their products from the purchasing centers of large and medium-sized supermarkets (GMS).
Milk, for example, is paid by dairies to breeders around €0.40 per liter;
down 6 cents from last year.
On the shelf, the UHT brick costs on average €1.07, or more than 2.6 times more expensive than when it left the farm.
At this price level, many breeders cover their structural costs, but not their labor.
According to them, the balance of power is unbalanced: there are only five purchasing centers in the country, for 50,000 breeders and 762 dairies.
2. Stopping the end of the zero-rating of diesel
Faced with the explosion in costs, particularly energy costs, farmers are demanding that the government reconsider its plan to eliminate tax exemption for non-road diesel.
3. Simplification of environmental standards
To be able to benefit from European aid from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) - an envelope of 9 billion per year, farmers must respect a certain number of community rules.
In the name of ecological transition and the “green deal”, which calls for a reduction in agricultural production, farmers must increase the area of fallow land by 4% this year.
Those who have left dairy farming, often for economic reasons, must reestablish meadows even if they no longer use them, in the name of biodiversity.
Read also Cornered by standards, agricultural France downgraded in Europe
4. Best consideration by the company
Many farmers say they are tired of the stigmatization of which they consider themselves victims as “polluters”, because they use plant protection products to treat their plants or spread fertilizers in their fields.
They also regret being regularly accused of mistreating their animals and repeat that it is in their interest to raise them as best as possible.
So many stigmatizations perceived as unfair by the farmers, who constantly remind us that their mission is to feed the population and that they do not count their hours.
Often well integrated into local life, they also provide numerous services to residents with their tractors, in particular to clear snow from roads, transport people in the event of floods or help firefighters stop field or forest fires with their slurry ton.
5. End of unwanted checks
To ensure that the standards in force and regulations linked to biodiversity - such as the ban on entering ditches without authorization - are respected, the administration sends controllers to the field.
The armed OFB environmental police can arrive on the operator's plots without prior authorization.
Also read: When the environmental police push farmers to their limits
In the Vosges, a farmer who had removed branches near a river was, for example, convicted of destroying the homes of a protected species - in this case the beaver.
In Oise, a farmer accused of putting glyphosate on a path ended his life in October 2022 because he could no longer stand being considered an offender by the administration.
He is one of those two peasants who commit suicide every day.
6. Better access to water
The subject of access to water is also one of the key demands for farmers.
Throughout France, farmers would like to be able to build up water storage reserves more easily, without having to meet increasingly restrictive conditions.
Their goal is to keep some of the water when it falls in abundance to reuse it when it becomes scarce and nature needs it the most, in spring and summer.
In Occitania, the epicenter of the current protest, the region has suffered from two consecutive dry summers and the water tables are still in a critical state.
The abandonment of the dam project at Sivens, in the Tarn ten years ago, under pressure from environmental activists, remains in everyone's memory.
In Lot et Garonne, farmers created a hill reserve to allow local arborists and breeders to continue to practice their profession, at the risk of being fined or even imprisoned.
In Deux-Sèvres, the issue of basins has been the subject of violent battles between farmers and environmentalists.
7- No bans on plant protection products without alternative solutions
Last year, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne drew up a list of 75 molecules which should disappear from the market in the coming years, but without providing substitute products.
Already in 2016, the former Minister of Agriculture Stéphane Le Foll had banned the use of dimethoate, used to fight against a fly, Drosophila suzukii, which lays its larvae in cherries.
But without an alternative product, the industry is collapsing.
In sugar beets, the cessation of neonicotinoids, an insecticide against aphids, has left many farmers in disarray.
They assure that they do not have alternative products to treat the yellows of their plants.
Three more local demands:
8. Epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD)
Transmitted by a fly which affects cattle in the South-West, this disease is harming local breeders.
They demand that the aid promised by the Minister of Agriculture last November be paid to them immediately.
9. Predatory shots on the wolf
In a large South-East quarter, sheep breeders are demanding the simplification of regulatory shooting in order to reduce wolf predation pressure.
More than approximately 1,000 sheep die each year after canid attacks on flocks.
Read alsoBrussels could authorize wolf hunting
10. Bear scare shots
In the Pyrenees, and more particularly in Ariège, shepherds are asking for the possibility of scaring bears, which kill nearly a thousand sheep annually.