Will he succeed in extinguishing the anger of the agricultural world? The French Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, is due to announce, on Friday January 26, the first rapid-effect measures to respond to the farmers who have been demonstrating for a week.

Faced with his first serious crisis since his appointment, Gabriel Attal must go to farmers on Friday to make "concrete proposals for simplification measures", accompanied by the Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau.

According to the large agricultural union FNSEA, it will go to Haute-Garonne (southwest), where the first highway blockade began a week ago.

The Departmental Federation of Agricultural Operators' Unions of Île-de-France announces five roadblocks around Paris from 2 p.m. Friday morning, the A1 motorway, a major axis linking Paris to northern Europe, was closed to traffic by tractors and straw bales in two places, causing significant difficulties.

“Today we are waiting for answers from the Prime Minister and if we do not have any we will continue the movement,” summarizes Jérémy Allard, agricultural unionist from the north of France.

“The movement is long-term,” warns Olivier Lelièvre, beet and corn producer, also mobilized at a dam.

Also read: Downgrading, debt, European standards… the reasons for the anger of French farmers

Various demands

More than 55,000 people mobilized on Thursday, according to a count from the FNSEA, the majority agricultural organization, which has been trying to channel this movement for a week.

Met in multiple places in France by AFP, the farmers have various demands, depending on whether they are poultry breeders hit by avian flu last year, wine growers whose wines sell less, or organic growers with shunned vegetables. by the French, or large cereal growers, like Thierry Cazemajou, who grows sweet corn and green beans for a major canned brand in Sigalens in Gironde.

For him, "GNR (non-road diesel) is really a priority, an essential reduction: we should return to 80 cents excluding taxes whereas we buy it at 1.20 euros, it's urgent, that lead!”

Others want a minimum price for their products or the payment of long-overdue aid or compensation, or even a moratorium on the ban on pesticides, as recently requested by the FNSEA. Some of the 140 demands put forward by the majority union require a law or European negotiations.

Across the country, demonstrators attacked state symbols and supermarkets on Thursday, giving the image of radicalizing anger.

Without intervention from the police at this stage, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, considered that the farmers did not attack the police or the gendarmes, and did not set fire to public buildings.

In Agen (southwest), demonstrators dumped tires, plastic, crates and manure in front of the station, while another team blocked the tracks. A wild boar was hanged in front of a Labor Inspectorate building.

For Charles Demeyer, endive producer in the North, "by bringing France to a standstill like that, maybe we will have answers."

Calls to loosen rules on water or pesticides

The Ministers of Agriculture and the Economy are leading a committee on Friday to monitor commercial negotiations between large retailers and their suppliers, intended to protect producers' income.

The demonstrations also brought to the forefront projects for free trade agreements, notably between the European Union and Mercosur, which brings together South American commercial powers, and which is opposed by a large part of the class. French politics.

In France, food imports are increasing, sometimes without having the same standards on pesticides for example.

While farmers are also mobilized in Germany, Belgium, Poland and Switzerland, the movement is popular in France, but not all unions are calling for slashing environmental standards.

The Confédération paysanne, the third representative union, classified on the left, offers solutions that are very different from those of the FNSEA, Young Farmers and Rural Coordination unions.

Environmental NGOs are alarmed by calls to loosen the rules on water or pesticides.

“It is not by reducing environmental measures that agriculture will resolve its crisis, on the contrary, it will only worsen the situation,” says Sandrine Bélier, director of the NGO “Humanity and Biodiversity”.

With AFP

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