Farmers from Côte-d'Or rekindle the fire of anger in Dijon

At the call of the FDSEA 21 and the JA, 200 to 250 farmers from all over the Côte-d'Or came to speak out in broad daylight about their concerns regarding Mercosur, this free trade agreement with five countries. South America namely Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia. If ratified, this agreement will abolish customs duties on certain products including agricultural production which does not meet the production standards imposed on our farmers. And we could – for example – find low-cost, poor-quality meat on the shelves of our supermarkets, explains one of the participants. This fire of anger took place on a plot located about ten meters from the Olympic swimming pool overlooking a ring road. The anger of the farmers was therefore seen in broad daylight. Nicolas Febvret raises laying hens Veronnes north of Dijon explains having “fed up with paperwork, fed up with working for nothing, fed up with broken promises”. “They found money to do the Olympics, to do the Tour de France and we got nothing, just crumbs.”

A huge pile of pallets

100 meters away, a huge pile of pallets is burning, the flames are risingall around farmers are regrouping, coming forward, expressing their solidarity. Jérémy Rognon, 27 years old, farmer in Pothièreson the Bellevue farm does not want Mercosur. “Simply because I raise poultry and we will still have to deal with unfair competition as is already the case with Ukraine. Brazilian chicken does not at all respect the same standards as us. If we allow products like that to enter the country, the door is open to anything and everything.”. Especially since the finances of our farmers are already under severe strain, explains the young man, also the new president of the JA of Châtillon-Laignes and Montigny. “It's more and more complicated to balance our cash flow, when we have all the taxes, the MSA at the end of the year we can no longer do it especially when we add the charges, the electricity increases, it becomes catastrophic”.

The weather as a double punishment

Farmers who are also being hit head-on by poor harvests and emerging diseases in their herds. Lionel Froidurot, retired farmer, owns a farm with horses in Flavigny-sur-Ozerainhe is very worried, “especially for young people” he said. “Everything is increasing, diesel, oils, the price of agricultural machinery”. He also rails against Mercosur. “We are told that there should be no more pollution, that we must be careful and these countries will send us their products by the boatload, it’s absurd”. As the farmers came without tractors, there was no problem with traffic.

New SOS in the sky over Côte-d'Or in response to the SOS last January

At the end of the demonstration they ignited bales of straw to form the word SOS, an SOS that had already been seen at the airport in Pouilly-Maconge last January, At the time, they traced it using 200 tractors with their lights on, and the whole thing was filmed by a drone. If this time this SOS was much more modest in size, it is to symbolize the worrying decline in the number of farmers in recent years. There are 100,000 fewer in 20 years alert Jacques de Loisy, president of the FDSEA 21. The new prefect of Côte-d'Or, Paul Mourier came to meet the farmers. He reaffirmed that France does not want this treaty “as it is presented today”.

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