“It’s really just a first act!”

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“Let’s go back for a ride”. The word, launched by a farmer from the FDSEA on Monday November 18, 2024 at midday, alone sums up the atmosphere which reigned along the RN88 at the northern entrance to Albi (Tarn). Pour the farmers as for the motorists whose queue lengthened between the roundabouts in the Rodez-Toulouse direction, it was déjà vu.

“It all started from here,” they proudly recall the demonstrators gathered on the service just before the Leclerc shopping center in Lescure-d'Albigeois. They are right, it was here, in Tarn, a year ago that the first municipal signs were returned. With the slogan “We walk on our heads” coined by the FDSEA and the JA and quickly taken up, like the modus operandi, everywhere in Occitania, then in the rest of the country.

One year later

During the same fall of 2023, tractors paraded in the prefectures, such as in Albi, on November 14. There followed a winter of protests with farmers blocking major traffic routes for several days. Here, it was at the western entrance to the ring road, in front of the other Leclerc, that of Portes d'Albi, in January 2024.

The movement then calmed down. But the fire continued to smolder. MHE, FCO… There are diseases that affect animals. And then the aid deemed insufficient. Income, just as insufficient. And finally, while the anger had reappeared in broad daylight with the removal of panels this time or the covering of radars in September 2024, which was experienced as a coup de grace, or the last straw or the spark: Mercosur.

Filtered trucks

In recent days, this is the word that has been circulating the most among farmers from the FDSEA and the JA, the two majority friendly unions. This is the word that we find on radars, on banners, on tractors which went back into battle this Monday, November 18.

Trucks are stopped, sometimes because they are suspicious, sometimes by scent, to check the goods. They are registered in Aveyron, Hautes-Pyrénées or further afield.

The drivers accept. Some people have gotten used to it. Most of the time there is nothing to complain about. A small van carrying cheese from Ségala was even stopped. “Sometimes, not everything is marked,” explains a zealous demonstrator while carrying out the check.

New Zealand lamb in the viewfinder

But sometimes, too, farmers come across a case that shocks them. An almost empty truck. With boxes on which Lidl is written. At the bottom there is meat. One of the “controllers” opens a package. Bingo is New Zealand lamb. “While we, in France, we have them everywhere. We have lamb three kilometers away, we have young ones settling in the lambwe have young people who know how to do it…” complains Christopher Régis, the boss of the JA du Tarn, in front of a swarm of cameras.

The truck will still be able to leave. Like the farmers elsewhere, who are leaving this location this afternoon to reach the city center of Albi and in particular the prefecture services. Before posting on roundabouts to light lights in the early evening. “It’s really just a first actwe will not let go of the pressure,” promises Christophe Rieunau, the co-secretary general of the FDSEA du Tarn.

Tuesday, November 19, it will be the turn of rural coordination to “express yourself” in the city center. Even if it is a safe bet that the FDSEA and the JA will still be active somewhere in the department…

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