Europe 1 with AFP 7:27 p.m., February 8, 2023
Some 620 agricultural machines and 3,000 demonstrators left Porte de Versailles, surrounded by numerous police officers to show their dissatisfaction with the pesticide legislation.
On January 23, the government gave up issuing an exemption allowing the use of neonicotinoids for the cultivation of sugar beet.
"They put more constraints on us and they tell us 'get out of it'": perched on their tractors, more than a thousand farmers marched in Paris on Wednesday against restrictions on the use of pesticides and other constraints, a first for more than three years.
Some 620 machines and 3,000 demonstrators, according to the first agricultural union, left the Porte de Versailles, supervised by many police officers.
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"It excites me to come to Paris by tractor", impatient Mathieu Beaudoin, 38-year-old cereal farmer, aboard his machine shaken by the cobblestones, with the Eiffel Tower in sight.
Farmers must be beyond reproach, but the population "does not buy our products" and "does not want to pay more", he regrets.
Trigger of the mobilization: on January 23, the government gave up issuing a derogation allowing the use of neonicotinoids for the cultivation of sugar beet, in accordance with a decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union welcomed by environmental NGOs.
In recent months, farmers have also denounced the increase in their costs in the face of soaring energy prices and have been demanding to be able to store water to irrigate their crops.
Their previous large-scale mobilization, snail operations on the ring road, dated back to November 2019, to denounce a tightening of the rules concerning the spreading of synthetic pesticides.
This time, it is the FNSEA section of the Parisian Grand Bassin, joined by the national federation and the union of beet growers CGB who called for mobilization, until February 20 throughout France.
After a peak of 425 km of traffic jams in the Paris region around 9 a.m. caused in part by this movement, the cumulative traffic jams then reduced to be only slightly above their usual average on this day of strike at the SNCF.
Grégoire Bouillant, a 40-year-old cereal farmer claiming to be part of "reasoned" agriculture, left his farm in Val-d'Oise around 5 a.m. to arrive, at 20 km / h, at Porte de Versailles, where in less than a month the International Agricultural Show.
He denounces "environmentalist pressure" and "
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Perched on a container filled with bales of straw and crates of apples, the president of the FNSEA, Christiane Lambert, said that agriculture could not do without chemistry.
"Never has there been so much question of food sovereignty, never have there been so many bans without solutions," she said.
Union flags and posters "my job respects nature, stop abusive ecologies" flourished on the windows of tractors photographed by many passers-by.
About thirty elected officials, including the president LR of Hauts-de-France Xavier Bertrand, were also present.
“There is no question of doing the same bullshit on agriculture” as on nuclear power, asserted Xavier Bertrand from the podium.
The farmers s'
were preparing to disperse by mid-afternoon.
The Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau received a delegation of demonstrators in the morning "to discuss the challenges they face and the future of agricultural sectors", according to a press release.
It will bring together the beet sector on Thursday to "present an action and support plan in response to the European decision".
According to Franck Sander, president of the CGB, present at the Invalides, the minister promised that the beet growers would receive "full compensation" in the event of loss of yields due to jaundice, reaping meager applause.
Neonicotinoids, insecticides toxic to bees banned since 2018, had benefited from a derogation for two years, which allowed them to be applied preventively to beet seeds to protect them from jaundice, spread by aphids.
"As a user of neonicotinoids, I don't feel like I'm poisoning the world", annoyed the farmer and union activist Damien Greffin, describing the meeting with the minister as "average", before concluding: "appointment you at the Agricultural Show".
The Peasant Confederation, the third union, deplored that some are demonstrating "to continue to use neonicotinoids and refuse any ecological progress".