Blockades by angry farmers are resuming in France and are expected to increase next week.
The reason for this renewed mobilization: the government's unkept promises since the demonstrations at the start of the year.
The possible signing of the Mercosur trade agreement and climatic hazards contribute to exacerbating the discontent of the profession.
A heifer disembowelled by a wolf left in front of a sub-prefecture of Doubs, a funeral wake held at “the memory of French agriculture” in Corrèze, chrysanthemums arranged at the foot of a cross symbolizing Vosges breeders abandoned by the Lactalis dairy group… since the beginning of October, striking actions carried out by angry farmers have multiplied in the regions. Despite numerous emergency aid and government announcements, agricultural mobilization is expected to increase further next week.
The majority union alliance FNSEA-JA has in fact called for national actions once winter sowing is completed, “from mid-November”, probably the week of November 18, when the G20 summit in Brazil will begin. The uproar is starting again, among other things, because the agricultural world has the feeling that the mobilizations of last winter have not changed much. But the prospect of a conclusion of the free trade treaty between the EU and Mercosur could well be the final straw.
“Broken” promises
“Without a structural response, the crisis has never stopped and it has greatly worsened due to climatic hazards,” underlines Laurence Marandola, spokesperson for the Confédération paysanne to AFP.
Guest of the TF1 morning show on October 16, Arnaud Rousseau, the president of the National Federation of Farmers' Unions (FNSEA), returned to the reasons for the uproar, which in his words is not back but “never left.” For him, government commitments have still not been kept. “We were made promises. That the promises are kept is normal!”the latter exclaimed on our antenna. The unions agree on one main point: the need for a decent income.
Mercosur
Added to the cash flow difficulties is the fear of signing the European Union's free trade agreement with Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia) and the fear of seeing taxes rise at the borders. Chinese and American.
In Haute-Garonne, Jérôme Bayle, cattle breeder in Haute-Garonne, one of the figures of the agricultural mobilizations which marked the South-West last winter, believes that the signing of the EU-Mercosur agreement will be the element “which will cause anger to explode.”
-
Read also
“We must expect a big mobilization of farmers”: the beginnings of a new winter of anger?
With this agreement, “we are going to allow the French to eat what we have no longer been allowed to produce for more than 20 years in France: beef with hormones, GMO corn, industrial chicken”deplores the founder of the “Ultras de l’A64”, named after the highway linking Tarbes to Toulouse, blocked for several weeks this winter. At the FNSEA, which defends France's export vocation for products such as wheat or cognac, Arnaud Rousseau calls on Paris to veto this treaty.
“We will never have the strike force of these large countries which deforest, which use GMOs, phytosanitary products banned here”, says Cyril Bousquet, breeder in the Tarn valley and president of the dairy cattle section of the FDSEA Tarn, adding: “There must be standards and barriers that allow us to compete in the same niches.”
Climatic hazards
Then, after a year marked by abundant and almost continuous rains, France experienced its worst wheat harvest in 40 years in 2024 and saw its harvest fall by a quarter. “It’s been going on since October 2023, we have almost 50 to 60% more rain than usual, with September 2024 being the rainiest in twenty-five years,” For his part, Luc Smessaert, vice-president of the FNSEA, farmer in Oise, declared on franceinfo in mid-October.
“There are two big problems today in France, the biggest is everything related to the environment, the catastrophic weather. And the second thing is the agricultural orientation law, which has been postponed. the two most penalizing points in the agricultural world”, Etienne Fourmont, a farmer in Sarthe and YouTuber, summarized this Friday on TF1. Faced with the scale of the difficulties encountered due to exceptional weather conditions, the unions are demanding compensation for operating losses.
Spread of diseases on farms
From the Pyrenees to the Belgian border, herds of cows and sheep are also subject to diseases that threaten the fertility of surviving animals and therefore future production. Epizootics affecting livestock have in fact multiplied in recent months, starting with bluetongue (BFT) and its variants, and epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EMD).
By way of illustration, for Jérôme Bayle, the losses resulted in around a quarter of abortions among the 100 cows in his herd.
