After the fires of protest organized by the FNSEA and the JA on roundabouts Monday evening, Rural Coordination entered the farmers’ protest this Tuesday with rallies in front of the prefectures. There were nine of them this Tuesday morning in front of the prefecture in Toulouse to be received by the prefect. But the second agricultural union plans to gain momentum this Wednesday with blockages like the one organized this Tuesday already in the Pyrénées-Orientales at the Boulou toll, on the Spanish border. Blockages from Spain to France with the aim of blocking food freight to show what France could look like if there were no more farmers.
This will be the case again this Wednesday morning in Haute-Garonne with another blockage from 10 a.m. in Foson the Spanish border, above Saint-Béat, announces the president of Rural Coordination in Haute-Garonne Maxime Raud. “We will let light vehicles pass but we will block all trucks. We don’t want to break everything otherwise we won’t be listened to. But we want to block France, so that they understand that at some point, we will have to move things. Since January, not much has happened. We don’t want to bother people. Last year, we bothered people and that’s not the goal. People are with us. people support us. Afterwards, there you go. what we want is to stop what comes back from abroad.”
Less than a year after a historic mobilization, agricultural unions believe they have not obtained enough progress and add to their grievances the proposed free trade agreement between the European Union and Latin American countries, Mercosur.
Other actions planned for this Wednesday
In addition to the blocking of Fos in Haute-Garonne, Rural Coordination plans to block food purchasing centers this Wednesday where distributors, particularly supermarkets, obtain their supplies. In the southwest, Rural Coordination targeted the purchasing centers of Fenouillet near Toulouse and Bressols in Tarn-et-Garonne. “We want to cause chaos and a food shortage”assured Serge Bousquet-Cassagne, figure of the CR in the South-West, present at Boulou.
Spearheading the agricultural mobilization at the start of the year, the Lot-et-Garonne Rural Coordination returned to the path of protest on Tuesday, ready to block “strategic points” to fight against “unfair competition” foreign productionsyellow hats and caps in the union color on their heads, a hundred tractors and skips loaded with waste. The objective for the 350 to 400 demonstrators (police figure): to reach the prefecture, which had already suffered the outbursts of their anger at the end of January with the watering of slurry on the facades and an impressive fire in front of the gates – the town hall d’Agen had estimated the cleaning bill at 400,000 euros in the urban area.
What does rural coordination weigh?
Since the farmers’ movement at the start of the year, there has been a lot of talk about Rural Coordination without really knowing what weight the union has, particularly in the South-West. The CR owns three chambers of agriculture in France including that of Lot-et-Garonne. And yet Maxime Raud, breeder in Herran in Comminges and president of CR 31, has the feeling that the union exists more and more. He took out his card last March. “The Rural Coordination is really well established. Many are fed up with the unions which only defend the big ones. We defend the base.”
The union also knows how to make a name for itself with punch operations. We spoke about the action in front of the Lot-et-Garonne Prefecture in Agen at the start of the year. We also remember the blocking of the A62 motorway between Montauban and Agen at the start of the year. And more recently, there was the arrival of the president of the National Rally, Jordan Bardella in Lot-et-Garonne. But this last example is specific to Lot-et-Garonne, warns the president of CR 31. “There are always politicians who try to take their place. I don’t want to bring in politicians. I work with everyone, at least as far as Haute-Garonne is concerned. Afterwards, everyone does what they want. “ In 2019, the Rural Coordination came far behind the FNSEA and the JA in the professional elections. Next meeting in January.
