Remember, it was between mid-January and mid-February, thousands of farmers, unionized or not, abandoned the fields for asphalt and flooded our screens, our radios, our newspapers, our networks. The liberated words paint the portrait of a profession that is impoverished, downgraded, discredited, spied on, harassed, while it struggles 70 to 80 hours a week to feed 68 million French people three times a day, for not very expensive and quite good. , not to say not expensive at all and very good. Despite the shrinking of the profession, a few thousand tractors remind our leaders and our compatriots that farmers still have the key to the fridge and the restaurant. And that their fight, temporarily transferred to the asphalt, is not only their reason for being, but a noble and just cause in the service of the entire Nation.
No sector spared
And yet, they hadn't seen everything. As summer approaches, the first threshing machines foreshadow a catastrophic harvest, with reductions if not falls in yield affecting more or less all species. At the end of the summer, it is the grape harvesting machines that scrape the sector, grappling with the lowest harvest since 1945. Faced with a critical sequence of climatic hazards, unpredictable geopolitical upheavals and increasing deconsumption , the wine industry is sinking into a crisis with unfathomable economic and socio-cultural impacts. And it’s a safe bet that subsidized grubbing will act as a poultice for a hangover. In the livestock sector, it is vector diseases, FCO and MHE, which are weakening the cattle and sheep sectors which did not require so much. In this game of massacre where climate change is at the forefront, the dairy sector is one of the few to stand out. Until Lactalis announced, in September, its decision to reduce its domestic collection by almost 9% by 2030.
From activism to political wandering
During this year, the government will be launched into a race to catch up at all costs in terms of recognition, reconsideration, revaluation, regeneration, liberalization, non-overtransposition, etc. They will be recorded in 70 commitments, some of which are included in the Agricultural Orientation Bill adopted on May 28 by the National Assembly. Alas, the dissolution on the evening of the European elections brings France into a political wandering of which it is difficult to see the outcome but not the damage and agriculture, promised to be recognized as being of “a major general interest of the Nation French”, will wait. Latest avatar to date: censorship and the fall of Michel Barnier's government, which deprives the sector of 400 million euros in social and tax subsidies. Two days later, on December 6, the final blow was delivered by the President of the European Commission who completed the free trade treaty between the EU and Mercosur. A ray of sunshine? Well no. On Christmas Eve, Météo-France described 2024 as the least sunny year in 30 years. Still a few days to go.
