Anger of farmers: 400,000 euros of damage in the Agen conurbation, according to the mayor

Europe 1 with AFP // Photo credit: Kiran Ridley / GETTY IMAGES EUROPE / Getty Images via AFP 5:10 p.m., February 1, 2024

The actions of farmers last week caused 400,000 euros of damage in the Agen area, according to the mayor, and the bill also amounts to hundreds of thousands of euros in other areas across the country. “I confirm that the damage is estimated at 400,000 euros. We must refine these figures,” declared Jean Dionis of Séjour (MoDem) to an AFP correspondent, confirming information from the newspaper Sud Ouest.

“The city will ask the State for a participation that would be legitimate”

“The agglomeration will take part of it, the city too. The city will ask the State for a participation which would be legitimate. It is its buildings which were targeted,” he added. The prefecture, covered on several occasions with slurry, was one of the main targets of the actions carried out last week in Agen by the Rural Coordination, which also targeted the Departmental Directorate of Territories or the Mutualité sociale agricole. Straw and pallet fires also damaged the roadways in front of buildings.

In the urban area, the Rural Coordination also blocked the A62 motorway and dumped tires, straw or slurry on hypermarkets, a purchasing center and even railway tracks. The departmental council is in the process of assessing the damage caused to the roads it manages. That of Haute-Vienne, crossed on Monday and Tuesday by the Rural Coordination convoy towards Rungis, cannot “precisely quantify the extent of the damage” but “it is indeed several hundred thousand euros” , according to its vice-president in charge of mobility, Stéphane Destruhaut.

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“Traffic has shifted to our network of departmental roads which is not capable of supporting the traffic that usually travels on the highway,” he adds, referring to “ruts” or even “heavy goods vehicles.” who overturned on roads that were not suitable. In Toulouse, the town hall announced on January 22 that it had filed a complaint against Farmers had dumped manure, branches and tires in front of administrative buildings.

“In Moselle, on Saturday, we cleaned 76 semi-trailers of waste on the highway,” declared the general director of Sanef, Arnaud Quémard, on BFMTV Tuesday morning. “It’s 150,000 euros of relief that we must finance, in order to return the highway to traffic.”