“French agriculture is in danger. On Wednesday, at the call of the FDSEA and Young Farmers unions, hundreds of tractors converged from all over the North to downtown Lille. The highlight of their anger: the non-treatment zones or ZNTs.
They came in convoys from the four corners of the department, disrupting the highways leading to Lille. Arrived in town at the end of the morning, nearly 500 tractors invaded the streets of the Post Offices, Inkermann, boulevard de la Liberté and Louis XIV, paralyzing the surroundings of the prefecture.
"If we cannot find an agreement, we will have to use stronger means"
Across the throat of farmers? Mercosur, Ceta, the EGAlim law ... The drop of water is stopped, entered into force on January 1, establishing buffer zones between fields and dwellings on which it is now forbidden to use pesticides. The size of these famous ZNT, non-treatment areas, varies between 5 and 20m, depending on the dangerousness of the products used.
The FDSEA considers that the government decision was taken "in an unjustified emergency" and that these new regulations are "imprecise and inconsistent". For this last point, the farmers denounce unfair competition from imported food products "treated with substances banned in France. "
"If we do not find an agreement, we will have to use stronger means," says a protester after the exit of the delegation received at the prefecture. “Talking does not mean accepting. The economic points of our demands have not even been addressed, ”laments another farmer. The tractors hit the road around 2:30 p.m.
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- pesticides
- Demonstration
- Lille
- Agriculture