Paris (AFP)

Hundreds of farmers took action on Monday evening "fires of anger", burning pallets, straw bales and stumps, to express the "malaise" of the agricultural world, at the call of the FNSEA and Youth farmers.

In Ile-de-France, fires were lit in half a dozen places, including two in the Val d'Oise, three in the Yvelines, and one in the Essonne, according to Amandine Muret-Beguin, cereal, secretary general IDF-West JA, attached to the phone by AFP.

"We called it the fires of anger, but also the fires of despair, to make feel the discomfort that surrounds the countryside, and the relentlessness that can be experienced on a daily basis," she said. declared. According to her, on each site, a good twenty members had to maintain the fires a good part of the night.

In Essonne, Damien Greffin, president of the FDSEA Ile-de-France, claimed about forty protesters in Etampes, with a dozen tractors and lit pallet lights.

"The agricultural world is stigmatized on a daily basis" and recently, the project of setting up non-treatment zones (ZNT) to protect people from the potential dangers of pesticides "set fire to the powders", explained Damien Greffin by phone.

In other regions, operations of the same type were organized: in Marne, from 17H00, two events took place in Witry-les-Reims, on the road leading to Charleville-Mézières, with about 70 people according to the FDSEA , and Sainte-Ménehould, with a dozen people.

In Haute-Garonne, small groups were also to light fires from 21H in fields near three or four rural communes around Toulouse, Xavier Dayde, deputy secretary general of the FDSEA 31.

In the Pas-de-Calais, at Coquelles, near the Channel Tunnel, about 70 local farmers had lit a fire in the open field and positioned about twenty tractors around a roundabout, without blocking access , said a correspondent of AFP.

In Calais, a demonstration of the same type, without blockage or clashes, took place at the roundabout near the hospital of the city.

The farmers intended to protest against the NZTs, but not only.

"It's been a drop in the water, we're already doing a lot of daily attacks on our practices, while the government admits that we have the most sustainable agriculture in the world, so it's nonsense", said Ms. Muret-Beguin, near the A13, in the area of ​​Mantes.

"I think there is a lack of knowledge of the agricultural sector," she lamented, inviting people to "come talk on farms, with farmers."

"We do not intend to block, this is not the goal," said this farmer Yvelines, which intends to continue these fires "all week": "after, if it is necessary to continue, the despair is so present that 'we will continue".

burs-ngu / ao

© 2019 AFP