The Rural Coordination of Centre-Val de Loire will demonstrate on Thursday November 28 in Orléans. A funeral march will be organized between the Coligny administrative city and the city center. She wishes, through this mobilization, to express her demands to the DRAAF and the regional prefecture.
The mobilization of the Rural Coordination of Center-Val de Loire will begin in front of the Regional Directorate of Food, Agriculture and Forestry (Draaf) of Center-Val de Loire, located in Coligny, rue du Faubourg-Bannier, at 11 a.m.
The demonstrators will then participate in “a funeral march”, between the Draaf and the Loiret prefecture, rue de Bourgogne, “in order to symbolize this silent agricide, denouncing the progressive disappearance of our agriculture and the lack of support for our farmers”, details Rural Coordination in a press release.
“Unfair competition”
The union has been participating, since Monday, November 18, in “an unprecedented movement of discontent throughout the country”. Because despite “the promises made by successive governments, the observation is bitter: nothing has been achieved on our farms”, he believes. “The European Union continues with a total inconsistency between its trade policy and its agricultural policy. It signs free trade treaties and is preparing to sign the one too many, Mercosur.
Rural Coordination feeds on the anger of farmers
And to denounce “overtransposition of standards“, a “unfair competition“and the import of products from neighboring countries where”certain products banned in France, such as neonicotinoids, are authorized“.
The union explains that French farmers, “already subject to particularly heavy taxation and high social charges imposed by the MSA”, see their competitiveness even more weakened compared to their foreign counterparts.
Mercosur: farmers subjected to unfair competition and ever stronger contradictions
Of the “educational checks” requested
Rural Coordination calls for “the establishment of educational rather than punitive controls”. But, according to the union, “the elected officials refuse this request
and are justified in the same way as Madame the prefect: “Ssuspending controls means taking the risk that the European Commission refuses to pay CAP support.” We want prices, not bonuses: we want to be able to live on the income from our work without being constantly monitored by satellite every 24 hours and up to 40 checks per year,” the press release concludes.
Why is the free trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur not in line with the climate challenge?
Maude Milekovic
France
