New mobilizations will take place on December 9 and 10 at the initiative of the FNSEA. This will include the income of farmers and the price of their products.
The return of the farmers. On the night of Thursday December 5 to Friday December 6, 2024, around fifty farmers from the Rural Coordination tried to block the Rungis market, in Val-de-Marne. A demonstration organized to contest the free trade treaty between the EU and Mercosur, about to be negotiated but not yet ratified. The latter attempted to enter the international market but found themselves blocked by law enforcement. It’s a “cat and mouse game”, jokes Edouard Legras, president of the Loir-et-Cher Rural Coordination in the columns of Le Parisien.
If some managed to enter the meat pavilion of the market, no overflow was to be deplored. “The message is still the same and we say it louder than ever: “no to Mercosur”, continues the leader of the second French agricultural union, calling for other actions and encouraging Emmanuel Macron to “set a course for agriculture “, comments relayed by the daily.
After the promises then the censorship, the movement “will get tougher”
Generally speaking, the agricultural world fears that the progress made will fall by the wayside after the censorship of the Barnier government. At the end of November, the Minister of Agriculture – now resigned – Annie Genevard had announced a series of simplification measures for farmers, including the creation of an “Orientation Council for crop protection” or “a circular to the prefects to optimize the instruction capacities of breeding projects, to shorten deadlines and favor educational controls for those recently established.
From now on, the future remains uncertain for a suffering profession. The mobilization will therefore “get tougher” promises the secretary general of Young Farmers, Quentin Le Guillous, to Agence-France-Presse (AFP).“We don’t forget income. We plan visits to supermarkets (large and medium-sized supermarkets) to denounce prices that are too low and check the origin of the products,” he continues. He finally calls for “meeting MPs to demand accountability”.
New mobilizations on December 9 and 10
The FNSEA has announced a new series of mobilizations on Monday, December 9 and Tuesday, December 10. Friday November 29, at the microphone of RMC, the president of the first agricultural union, Arnaud Rousseau, added that they will be done “around income, around the relationship with the price of our products, particularly in the context of the start of relations sales, negotiation with distributors”.
The movement therefore continues while the mobilization of farmers began on November 18 after the call from the FNSEA and the JA, the majority union alliance. They denounce in particular their working conditions as well as the free trade agreement with Mercorsur. Rural Coordination joined the movement on November 19 with more substantial actions, notably the blocking of certain roads such as the A9 between Spain and France and the blocking of purchasing centers.
The mobilizations of farmers are diverse: filter dams on the roads, occupation of roundabouts and roads, “fires of anger”, mobilizations in front of the prefectures with dumping of manure or waste and other more substantial actions such as blockades of roads and purchasing centers, controls of goods. On November 28, they attacked public institutions, including Anses and Inrae, by erecting symbolic walls in front of their entrances.