At 11 days from the first round, they will be six to speak in front of 1,500 farmers at the initiative of the Council of French Agriculture (Caf) and the main union, the FNSEA: some of them are expected in Besançon, like Valérie Pécresse (LR), Marine Le Pen (RN), Eric Zemmour (Reconquest), the communist Fabien Roussel and the iconoclast Jean Lassalle.

Taken by the presidential agenda, with a Defense Council in the morning followed by a Council of Ministers, Emmanuel Macron will address farmers by video.

On Tuesday, the war in Ukraine kept him busy again, with a telephone interview with Vladimir Putin, as Russian-Ukrainian negotiations in Turkey seemed to be progressing.

From short circuits to the withdrawal of free trade agreements, via the total abolition of pesticides, the 12 candidates for the Elysée Palace are teeming with ideas to lend a hand to an agriculture hit by soaring production and material costs. agricultural raw materials caused by the war in Ukraine.

The president of the FNSEA Christiane Lambert during a press conference on March 23, 2022 in Paris Eric PIERMONT AFP / Archives

"We are still feeling the upheavals of the health crisis, and one crisis is now adding to the other", according to the president of the Caf and the FNSEA, Christiane Lambert.

"We thought that food security was no longer a subject (...) but we need a strong paradigm shift and a strong comeback of food sovereignty as a major element of policies," she pleaded.

Most of the candidates defend this objective, which covers different meanings according to their political color and has imposed itself in the public debate in recent weeks.

In Besançon, everyone will present their ideas for about ten minutes, before engaging in a half-hour of questions and answers with the public, made up of the main players in the agricultural world (cooperatives, banks, insurance).

Developments in French agriculture Kenan AUGEARD AFP

Absentees on the left

Ms. Lambert "regretted" that the ecologist Yannick Jadot, the rebellious Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the socialist Anne Hidalgo "declined the invitation".

Struggling in the polls, the PS mayor of Paris told the union that she could not go there for scheduling reasons.

According to Ms. Lambert, the environmental candidate would have accepted the invitation before changing his mind.

He goes, on the other hand, to Margny-sur-Matz (Oise) on the theme of rurality, whose mayors have been very solicited by the candidates to obtain the 500 sponsorships and want to make their demands heard in the campaign.

Rural and urban France Cléa PÉCULIER AFP

According to an Ifop poll commissioned by the union and published on Tuesday, outgoing President Emmanuel Macron gathers 30% of farmers' voting intentions at this stage, followed by Valérie Pécresse (13%), Éric Zemmour (12%) and Marine Le Pen ( 11%).

For its part, La France insoumise, whose candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon is best placed on the left, is trying to mobilize voters as the first round of April 10 approaches, with a meeting on the theme of "the union of popular neighborhoods" organized in Saint-Denis, in the Parisian suburbs.

In the home stretch of the campaign, the gap is narrowing in the polls between Emmanuel Macron and his immediate pursuers, even if he remains largely in the lead.

According to the Ipsos Sopra-Steria "rolling", the president has lost 2.5 points in one week to stand at 27% of the voting intentions, while Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon gain 2 to stand respectively at 19.5% and 15%.

In the second round, Emmanuel Macron's potential opponents are also gaining ground, even if they are still beaten.

In the event of a duel with Marine Le Pen as in 2017, Emmanuel Macron would win by 56% against 44%, while the score a week ago was 59% against 41%.

© 2022 AFP