« Oh Jordan, look up and look at the woodpigeons they want to stop us from hunting! » Thus emerges in his own way Serge Bousquet-Cassagne, thunderous president of the Chamber of Agriculture of Lot-et-Garonne, sharply cutting the quid to the boss of the National Rally then in the process of distilling a few elements of language in front of the cameras. “Okay, now we'll have to push the vegan journalists so that you get on the tractor, otherwise we won't be close to eating,” adds the man who will confirm behind the scenes that he imagines one day becoming his Minister of Agriculture. At first, a one-way informal greeting, under the somewhat annoyed gaze of a chief of staff fearing to see him thus deface the postcard sent to the televisions from the fields of Marmandais. He didn't have to worry.
A sling announced
Already on conquered ground in this department where all the municipalities placed him in the lead on the evening of the European elections, Jordan Bardella can also openly count on farmers from the Rural Coordination (CR) in order to plow more each season in this South-West for a long time resistant to the arguments of the extreme right. On the road leading him Sunday morning to a farm in Virazeil, this slogan painted under a railway track – “We do not dissolve an uprising” – will have reinforced his choice of this first organized trip after the publication of an autobiography recounting his exclusively urban youth. “Despite last winter's crisis, none of our farmers' demands have been addressed, the vital prognosis of French agriculture is in jeopardy,” he repeated on the sidelines of his meeting in Tonneins, and very opportunely. two days before the new revolt announced by the Rural Coordination for November 19. “Load your trailers carefully, prepare your sleeping bags, we are off to overturn the table,” warns Karine Duc, co-president of Rural Coordination in Lot-et-Garonne and who has already spent a night in police custody. “We would gladly do without causing chaos, but in France, only the strong way works. »
“Hoping that you are not a pure product of Parisian marketing. »
If the winemaker swears that she has “a hard time believing in politics”, yesterday it was clear that the links, if not murky, at least close, between the National Rally and this union are now carving out large electoral-media croupiers at the FNSEA (1 ). Born in neighboring Gers on the basis of an ideological split at the start of the 1990s, the CR today claims more than a thousand members here. Many of whom no longer move forward in disguise, even though everyone probably does not vote as one man in favor of the Le Pen-Bardella duo. “We have no direct affinity with the RN,” explains Vincent Rigo, this cereal grower in his forties who was nevertheless chosen to welcome Jordan Bardella to his farm. “Except that it is only this party that talks about intra-European competitive distortion or the danger of free trade agreements like Mercosur. And above all who talks about it like us. »
Allegiance to the “messiah”
What then does the modesty of some of his comrades matter, when Emmanuel Macron, among others, had made the Rural Coordination responsible for the violent excesses of last winter. “I condemn all violent actions, because they are the poison of democracy, but I do not believe that we can summarize the agricultural movement as that,” Bardella apologizes.
On Sunday, the president of the National Rally will not really have had to blow on the embers of the agricultural crisis, Serge Bousquet-Cassagne will ultimately have handed him the lighter for a declaration of love and allegiance. “I don't believe in God but, after trying all the others, we expected you to be the messiah. Hoping that you are not a pure product of Parisian marketing, because, despite everything, you will leave Lot-et-Garonne with five or six centimeters less: under the weight of the confidence of the people here. » Applause. Contagious. Fed.
(1) The second agricultural union in the country, the Rural Coordination has more than 15,000 members. During the last elections to the chambers of agriculture in 2019, she received more than 20% of the votes. The next ones will take place at the end of January 2025.
