Agro-industry: a grain train stopped by demonstrators in Brittany

"The above-ground farming system is going straight into the wall, we must put agro-industry down", said in a press release the demonstrators, gathered at the call of the Collective "Brittany against factory farms".

Activists built a wall across the railway tracks, the photographer observed, to symbolize "a wall across the tracks of agribusiness", they said.

"By dumping these cereals intended to feed part of the Breton livestock, we symbolize the link to the ground to be recreated in our agriculture, the link to the Breton land, this same land which cannot withstand the effects of the raising such a large number of animals,” they explained on their Facebook page.

Members of the collective "Brittany against factory farms" built a wall across the railway tracks, near ¨Pontivy in Brittany on March 19, 2022 JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER AFP

"The earth can no longer regenerate itself; it is the overstepping of its limits which forces the massive imports of proteins (including soybean cakes from South America, editor's note) and the exports of nitrogen and phosphorus to lands less saturated”, they wrote, in reference to the transport, in particular to other regions of France, of manure from Breton farms, used as fertilizer.

"We will continue to act. It is the lives of farmers who are at stake (...) The latest IPCC report clearly indicates a lack of political will" to change the situation, they said. .

The Collective advocates "a peasant agriculture, living, agro-ecological, territorialized, job-creating and remunerative".

"We will fight for the disappearance of a destructive system, we will fight for the emergence of a truly nourishing, joyful and living agriculture", affirms the Collective again.

The collective "Brittany against factory farms" demonstrates near Pontivy in Brittany, March 19, 2022 JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER AFP

The shipment was destined for Sanders, a subsidiary of the Avril group, according to the demonstrators.

Several agricultural sectors in Brittany, France's leading agricultural region where livestock farming dominates, are going through a deep crisis and are having negative effects on the environment, including on air quality.

© 2022 AFP