Eleven days after the government's announcements to end the agricultural crisis, the unions are growing impatient.
They denounce the gap between the promises made by the executive at the beginning of February and the concrete results on the ground.
The base, which returned its tractors to the farms after two weeks of demonstrations, is still awaiting the application of the first measures.
For Arnaud Rousseau, president of the FNSEA, the majority agricultural union, the account is not there.
He will tell Gabriel Attal during their meeting this Tuesday afternoon in Matignon.
“We are not at the right pace. There are meetings in the prefecture which generally go well but at the national level this is not the case,
he told BFMTV.
Contacts are nice, but we need to start seeing the framework of concrete decisions that will change the lives of farmers.”
And to take as an example the visit to Pas-de-Calais of the Prime Minister, accompanied by his Minister of Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, last Thursday, to the peasants victims of the floods.
No one has any interest in walking around with us.
I have to be accountable to the people who mandated us.
Expectations are very high.
The movement can restart at any time
Arnaud Rousseau, president of the FNSEA
“There are high expectations from farmers regarding the cleaning of ditches, there has been a government decree taken to simplify the process. On the ground, the administration does not follow and it is not possible for the machines to work
,” he laments.
Another sensitive subject, that of the ecophyto plan which aims to halve the volumes of phytosanitary products used by farmers by 2030. A new framework must be defined with the government, farmers and environmental associations by the Show of agriculture which begins on February 24.
Paused, this plan must include indicators harmonized at European level.
On Monday, eight environmental NGOs slammed the door on a meeting on the evaluation of pesticides at the Ministry of Agriculture while the unions also point out the absence of concrete announcements.
Finally, the question of the 4% of compulsory fallows from this year within the framework of the common agricultural policy is at a standstill.
In order to promote biodiversity, the “green pact” defined by Brussels plans to reduce cultivated areas by 4%.
An objective contradictory with the mission of ensuring Europe's food sovereignty according to farmers.
“A meeting took place in Brussels last Friday on the 4% fallows.
In the end, nothing was decided,”
Arnaud Rousseau still regrets.
Also read: The European “green deal”, this threat that hangs over farmers
“Farmers do not want to live on subsidies”
“Finally, on the price paid to farmers, we expect a commitment from large retailers before the Agricultural Show. The Lidl group has made a proposal for a tripartite farmer-industrial-distributor agreement. Is it taken back, how do we do it?
, asks the grain grower from Seine-et-Marne.
This is not the right way to follow the subjects, we need progress updates every 48 hours between now and the Show.”
The Lidl group, for its part, wrote to the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister to generalize its working method to all agricultural products.
“Farmers want to make a living from their profession with a selling price above their cost price, and not from subsidies,”
explains Michel Biero, boss of Lidl France.
In milk, I invite farmers to negotiate prices with manufacturers.
They tell us their selling price, around 50 cents per liter, then they go out and I discuss with the dairies starting from this basis.
We must undertake this approach with all agricultural products.”
Farmers want to make a living from their profession with a sale price above their cost price, and not from subsidies.
Michel Biero, boss of Lidl France
At the initiative of certain departmental federations of the FNSEA, farmers will undertake new actions this week, aimed more at mass distribution with price readings.
“It’s to see if the famous message of the EGalim law which protects agricultural raw materials is well respected, some of our members have difficulty believing it
,” warns Arnaud Rousseau.
In addition, the livestock support plan - 150 million euros in aid, or a little more than 1,000 euros per farm if we only take into account cattle breeding as initially planned - is not still not declined.
Nothing says that sheep farming will benefit, which reinforces the feeling of abandonment of this sector, in particular that of transhumant sheep farming, which ensures biodiversity in the mountains.
Breeders and shepherds plan to demonstrate their discontent in front of Bercy this Tuesday morning.
They are bearing the brunt of wolf predation and competition from the European Union's free trade agreements, particularly with New Zealand, Australia and Chile.
“
On
wolf predation
, a daily scourge in 58 departments, we have not noted any progress even though defensive shooting should be recognized as a means of protection
,” protests Michèle Boudoin, sheep breeder and president of the National Sheep Federation.
It is time to stop the concessions of these free trade agreements.
Europe must use the safeguard clause as it did for the poultry, eggs and sugar sector imported from Ukraine.
But nothing is written in the government proposals.”
Agricultural orientation law
Beekeeping is a sector which also has the feeling of having passed under the radar of the Attal plan.
“
We are still very mobilized,”
says Julien Perrin, beekeeper in Orsay, present for 15 days at the A10 roadblocks.
We are encountering serious problems of unfair competition, with foreign honey costing 1 euro per kilo while our production cost is 5 euros.
During the blockades, we intercepted honey produced in Ukraine in trucks.
It is resold by large companies that are well established with the French origin label.
Fraud is massive.
This is the case for two thirds of honey sold in large and medium-sized supermarkets.
Sometimes it is only glucose sugar and we are unable to sell our honey,”
adds the man who is obliged to give biology lessons because his 2,100 hives do not allow him to survive.
Furthermore, the ban on certain chemical molecules without an alternative solution puts certain sectors such as that of endiviers in danger of disappearing.
There are only 300 producers left in France, three times fewer than twenty years ago.
“
A herbicide, Bonalan, will be banned next April in Europe.
This is the only way to eradicate lamb's-quarters, a weed that chokes endive cultivation.
We have no other option to eradicate it,
points out Pierre Varlet, director of the endivier sector
.
We tried the hoeing robot but it didn't work.
We should be given time to find a lasting solution before banning a treatment and carrying out an economic and social impact study.
Endive could disappear from our plates even though we were the world’s leading producers!”
We should be given time to find a lasting solution before banning a treatment and carrying out an economic and social impact study.
Endive could disappear from our plates even though we were the world's leading producers!
Pierre Varlet, director of the endivier sector
In recent weeks, farmers have also denounced the multiplication of standards and administrative tasks.
Here too, simplification is not in sight.
“
I do things that make no sense because of the standards and I have to justify myself yes or no to the administration
,” regrets Pierre Bote, market gardener and cereal grower on the Saclay plateau south of Paris.
I couldn't pull out the parsnips in the fall because it was too wet or do the transitional crops after the wheat.
I had to declare it to the state services because we are regularly observed from the sky by satellite photos.
I was not able to put in the same regulation basin the water which overflows from the neighboring watercourse and the rain coming from the roofs of buildings and greenhouses because they do not come under the same law.
I was interviewed at the gendarmerie, it’s been going on for seven years.”
While Gabriel Attal assures that the agricultural orientation bill will be presented around the Agricultural Show, the pressure is returning to the executive.
“No one has any interest in walking around with us.
I must be accountable to the people who mandated us,
warns Arnaud Rousseau.
Expectations are very high and the embers remain particularly hot.
The movement can restart at any time.”
Monday evening, Véronique Le Floc'h, president of Rural Coordination, announced on BFMTV that her union would be received at the Elysée on Wednesday.