Will the farmers’ protest move “towards a movement where everyone would be involved, of the “yellow vest” type? This is what Véronique Le Floc’h, the president of Rural Coordination, thinks, the second agricultural union. Since last fall, discontent has been growing in France: starting from Tarn, a peaceful movement to overthrow municipal signs has spread throughout the country.
The tone has hardened in recent days, with, since Thursday evening in Occitanie, the blocking of the A64 motorway but also rallies in front of administrations or on roundabouts. Access to the Golfech power plant, in Tarn-et-Garonne, was blocked this Monday by farmers, according to the gendarmerie, while the A64 motorway is still cut in Haute-Garonne.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal will receive this Monday the president of the powerful FNSEA union Arnaud Rousseau and his counterpart from Young Farmers (JA) Arnaud Gaillot at 6 p.m. If the government is “not there”, “we could be at the dawn of a big agricultural movement”, declared Monday morning the president of the JA on France 2. The anger of the farmers, in France but also in Europe, is indeed deep, as these figures illustrate.
A probable drop in revenue of 9%
According to INSEE, the indicator closest to agricultural income, namely gross value added per worker, is expected to decline by 9% in 2023, after two years of increases linked mainly to the surge in the price of raw materials. like cereals. This indicator had in fact increased by 13.1% in 2021 then by 9.6% in 2022. At the same time, the French refuse to pay more for their food, after a peak in inflation of more than 20% on two years.
The cost of energy has exploded, the costs of inputs (fertilizers, phytosanitary products, etc.) have increased, as have those of labor and animal feed. The war in Ukraine disrupts flows with huge imports into Europe of cereals, poultry and sugar. “It disrupts all sectors, it lowers prices,” Christiane Lambert, president of the Committee of Professional Agricultural Organizations of the European Union, explains to AFP.
A drop in production of up to 15%?
If France is the first beneficiary of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) with 9 billion euros in aid per year, its farmers contest the strategy of greening European agriculture contained in the EU Green Deal. This legislative project, aimed at halving the use of chemical phytosanitary products by 2030 (compared to the period 2015-2017), was rejected in the European Parliament at the end of November 2023. But farmers fear seeing the return of this project and intend to weigh in before the European elections next June.
The European Green Deal could lead to a drop of up to 15% in production. According to a study by the European Commission Research Center published in summer 2021, this European green deal would lead to a drop in production of 5 to 15%. This would require importing from third countries that do not meet the same standards as Europe. “We want green, environmental, animal welfare and, at the same time, we open the floodgates of importation,” protests with Echoes Franck Pouillot, from the FDSEA of Yonne.
French farmers also denounce Brussels’ refusal to extend into 2024 the exemption allowing fallow land to be cultivated (around 4% of agricultural land) while “the food tension caused by the war in Ukraine continues”.
Around fifteen texts… only for hedges
This is an example used by Arnaud Rousseau to illustrate the stacking of standards. It concerns hedges. “Why don’t farmers do it? Because there are 14 regulatory texts”, even though everyone recognizes the virtues of hedges against erosion, for biodiversity, etc. explains the boss of the FNSEA. “Today, this hedge is subject to 14 different European and French regulations. The town planning code, the heritage code, the environmental code… That is to say, the farmers have no I don’t even want to plant anymore”, abounds with TF1 Luc Smessaert, cattle breeder in Roy-Boissy (Oise) and vice-president of the FNSEA.
“Physical hardship has gradually given way to moral hardship which is due in particular to the enactment of rules and standards that are increasingly onerous to bear. […] at some point the cup overflows”, Etienne Gangneron, president of the Cher Chamber of Agriculture, told the Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau, on Saturday. The unions denounce the government’s slowness in implementing administrative “simplification” promised. “The farmers who call us no longer even know what they have the right to do or not,” Véronique Le Floc’h told AFP. Recognizing the need for a “simplification” of the mille-feuille of standards and regulations imposed on farmers, Marc Fesneau considered that it was necessary to seize the opportunity of this law to “accelerate” on this subject and “give credibility to public speech”.
More than 150,000 farmers soon to retire
The bill on the installation of new farmers was to be presented on Wednesday January 24 to the Council of Ministers. But this text is postponed for “a few weeks” to be completed with a “simplification” component, Marc Fesneau announced on Sunday during of the Grand Jury RTL/Paris Première/M6/Le Figaro, specifying that the objective was to see the text debated in Parliament “in the first half of 2024”. Already postponed several times, the law “in favor of generational renewal in agriculture” is awaited by farmers, at a time when the population of nearly 500,000 farm managers is aging. The Ministry of Agriculture estimates that “a third of farmers, or 166,000 farmers or co-farmers”, will retire in the coming decade.
The successive postponements of the text, ultimately less ambitious than the “agricultural orientation law” announced last year, had annoyed the unions, arousing in particular the ire of the powerful FNSEA which had threatened, without rapid progress, to disrupt the visit of the Head of State, Emmanuel Macron, to the Agricultural Show, which will be held from February 24 in Paris.
More than 3,700 outbreaks of epizootic hemorrhagic disease
Farmers in the southwest have also recently faced a surge in cases of epizootic haemorrhagic disease (EHD), which weakens animals and disrupts trade. The Ministry of Agriculture announced on January 19 that the State would reimburse breeders 80% of the costs of veterinary care linked to MHE and that it would compensate them up to 80% in the event of the death of the animal. “Breeders will be able to submit their compensation files from the beginning of February,” it is specified in the press release.
The ministry also recalls that MHE, discovered at the end of September 2023 on French territory, “has experienced rapid expansion since 3,729 outbreaks are now recorded in 20 departments”. “As a result, the control and prevention measures planned within a radius of 150 km around the outbreaks now apply to almost half of French territory,” he underlines. As for the “mortality rate in contaminated farms”, it “is estimated at 1%”.
A 14% drop in water availability
Farmers are also the first victims of climate change. The lack of water is one of the major concerns of the profession. The impact of climate change on water resources requires “strengthening” public preservation policies, argues a parliamentary report presented on January 17 to the National Assembly.
Climate change and the rise in average temperature levels are already affecting the availability of the resource in mainland France, which fell by 14% between the period 1990-2001 and the period 2002-2018, “going from 229 to 197 billion m3”, underlines this report written by deputies Vincent Descoeur (LR, Cantal) and Yannick Haury (Renaissance, Loire-Atlantique). The phenomenon will continue, underlines the report, which cites the Explore 2070 study, with which the Bureau of Geological and Mining Research (BRGM) is notably associated: by 2050, precipitation should drop by 16 to 23% and the average annual flow of rivers is expected to decrease by 10 to 40%.