“We feed our children with food from elsewhere that is illegal to produce here,” said David Nicolas, a cattle breeder in Chabrac, who demonstrated this Thursday. “If the regulations are not the same for everyone, we will end up disappearing.” Free trade agreements, broken promises regarding administrative facilitation, these are the demands that the farmers of CR16 had this Thursday morning.
And it is also those of the FNSEA and the Young Farmers (JA), who launched the movement on Monday. Symbolically and together on the Road to Europe. Wednesday evening, to dump the manure and slurry, the JA went there alone. Right when the CR was showing its muscles. The farmers' revolt signals the start of the race for the presidency of the Chamber of Agriculture, on January 7.
At the Scachap base in Ruffec, the headquarters is ready: electricity, water, insulated kitchen and dormitory in Algeco.
Renaud Joubert
“It’s obvious,” recognizes Agnès Rousteau. “We are falling into overbidding, it is the one who will show the biggest muscles,” points out the spokesperson for the Charente Peasant Confederation, who recalls that if her union is being rather discreet for the moment, it has received the prefect from Charente Jérôme Harnois this Tuesday on a farm in Saulgond and carried out some actions in Limousin and Brittany.
“Of course it is the elections that are being prepared but it is above all the substance that poses a problem, we are going to die! », Launches Lætitia Plumat, head of the CR16 list for the upcoming elections. For Xavier Desouches, regional president of the same union, “another policy must be decided. The FNSEA manages everything: insurance, the agri-food industry. In Charente, it ate 1.8 million euros from working capital, for not much in the way of results.”
Frank Olivier, president of CR16, gets into gear. “The FNSEA claims to be against the Mercosur agreements but it neglects to say that its president, Arnaud Rousseau, is director of the multinational Avril,” he says.
“It’s the one who shows the biggest muscles.”
The tone of the campaign is set and Jean-Bernard Sallat, the president of the FNSEA 16, does not hide the fact that he expects a campaign that is a little more muscular than in the past, “when we held meetings, when we debated, that we respected each other. It has become like political campaigns,” he says during a demonstration. This time, we will have to defend a record. The FNSEA and the JA chose to form a joint list, and to support Christian Daniau, the outgoing president of the Chamber. “We don’t wake up after five years. We are taking action,” says the President of the House.
On the side of the Peasant Confederation, we are trying to stand out. “We are not in solidarity with what the JA are doing, dumping manure in front of the MSA, the OFB and the DDT to denounce the standards. It is not by reducing environmental or administrative constraints that we will gain peasant income. The problem of peasant income is international trade.”
Julien Thibaud, breeder in Lésignac-Durand also regrets the “shortcut made between the farmers of CR16 and the National Rally”. “It’s because of CR47 and its president. I know the political opinions of most of my guys, they have nothing to do with each other,” insists Frank Olivier, who specifies that “we will only leave camp when the Minister of Agriculture has made announcements.” This has promised them in the days to come, while the FNSEA has called for a new mobilization next week. The campaign continues.
The CR takes serious root in Ruffec
They arrived from Vienna on Wednesday evening, settled in the Scachap parking lot, blocked the access and have no intention of leaving the premises. “Not until we have obtained satisfaction,” asserts François Turpeau, president of CR86. They have electricity from the generator, water from the fire hydrant, a closed lazarette insulated with straw, an Algeco dormitory. Enough to hold a seat. Three-star campsite. Sometimes they throw stones around to reinforce the dam, which annoys the police. They discuss, a lot, the “jacquerie” in progress and ensure liaison with Bordeaux, – “They are hot” –, Vars, Roullet “which must also hold.
At the Scachap depot, in Gond-Pontouvre, the police came to tell the fifteen or so mobilized farmers to leave the site before 8 p.m. this Thursday evening. At the Lidl logistics base in Vars, farmers set up camp, blocking entrances and exits to the site, and stayed overnight. “We left to stay all weekend. As long as the minister has not made her announcements,” specifies Frank Olivier, president of CR16.
In Ruffec, François Turpeau and his troops planned to spend the weekend at the camp, with unlimited apple pie. “We will move when we have been satisfied with energy, the non-transposition of standards, the property tax”, and even “the dissolution of the OFB”. It can last…
