Under the winter sun, angry farmers have set up a makeshift camp on the A64 in Carbonne, near Toulouse, and are warming themselves around braziers, determined to hold this roadblock to denounce the deterioration of their condition.
“Here begins the country of agricultural resistance”, can be read on a tarpaulin, covering a pile of straw bales almost three meters high, motorists forced to exit the motorway near Carbonne, some 45 km from Toulouse.
The tone is set: it has been three days since the A64 was cut.
Even if he regrets the inconvenience caused, Nicolas Suspene does not apologize.
“We don't like to bother people, but how else can we make ourselves heard?
», asks this 44-year-old farmer, mayor of the small village of Saint-Elix-Séglan.
Having come to lend a helping hand to this “nerve point” of agricultural mobilization in Occitania, which aims to obtain massive and immediate support from the State for a sector in crisis, Benoît Larroche, a 36-year-old cereal farmer, thinks that “it’s okay to move ".
There are around a hundred of them holding the makeshift camp set up on Saturday on the two lanes of this motorway which connects the Pink City to Bayonne.
On site, the demonstrators break a snack, smoke one cigarette after another, check on each other while warming their hands over a few braziers.
Not far away, sausage, chops and chocolate cake sit alongside a red cubi on a white table.
“We can’t take it anymore”
The dam stretches over several hundred meters, demarcated by a long line of tractors and agricultural trucks.
The smell of diesel from the electric generator and the pungent smell of campfires mingle.
“Here is the point where it started and where we have to hold on,” says Benoît Fourcade, another 50-year-old cereal grower.
Leaning on a bright red tractor, he lists the difficulties that are accumulating for the sector: “The CAP (common agricultural policy, European subsidy program which has decreased over the years, Editor's note), the GNR (agricultural diesel which they denounce the increase in taxes), all of that, at a certain point we can’t take it anymore.”
The atmosphere is cordial.
But the discussions implicitly reveal great distress.
If “the Roundup is taken away from us, I will fallow everything (…) and we will report to the factory,” explains Benoît Fourcade, cap screwed on his head, in reference to the glyphosate-based herbicide considered dangerous for health.
He deplores the unfair competition from imported products that do not meet European standards, which end up making farmers dizzy.
“The government must fight at the European level to impose floor prices,” adds Hervé Boucton, a 58-year-old cereal farmer.
“And if Europe (…) does not want to, then the French state must stop constantly imposing additional burdens…”
Also read: Inflation, red tape… Why anger is gaining ground among farmers
Under the bridge that spans the A64, models in overalls swing sinisterly with ropes around their necks.
Cars passing overhead honk in support.
Solidarity is there.
Thus, Éric Anquenot, a collector of cooking oil who is also “asphyxiated by taxes”, came to bring around twenty pallets to help warm those who will spend the night.
“I try to be as supportive as possible,” confides the 62-year-old man, who finds himself in the difficulties that farmers are experiencing.
“We’re all in the same boat,” he said.
“I’m going to spend time with them, cheer them up.
» For that, there's nothing like the pancakes that he will bring back in the evening.
Gabriel Attal showed his support for farmers on Saturday, courted by the National Rally a few months before the European elections.
Agriculture is “an absolutely major subject (…) which I take very seriously”, immediately affirmed the new head of government, during an exchange with French people organized in Saint-Laurent-d’Agny (Rhône ).
Referring to agriculture as an “opportunity” and a “pride” for France, he notably promised to “make life easier” for farmers by reducing “red tape”.
Almost at the same time, 600 km away, the president of the RN, Jordan Bardella, head of the list in the European elections of June 9, was with a dairy farmer in Queyrac (Gironde).
He denounced "Macron's Europe" which wants, according to him, "the death of our agriculture" put in competition "with agricultural products which come from the ends of the world, which do not respect any of the ever harsher and ever more stringent standards. heavier than those imposed on French farmers.