Caroline Baudry / Photo credits: Estelle Ruiz / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP 9:35 a.m., February 18, 2024

Less than a week before the opening of the Agricultural Show, farmers, who were strongly mobilized in January, are maintaining pressure on the government. A handful of gatherings took place on Saturday in France.

“Farmer, when I was little, I dreamed of it, today I’m dying.” This sentence sits on a sign hanging from one of the 45 tractors present in the streets of Besançon on Saturday. The farmers wanted to meet the prefect and gather the troops before an "action" at the Agricultural Show next week, announced Nicolas Bonguet, president of the Doubs Rural Coordination. 

“We’re not here to annoy people”

“We are not here to annoy people or give a bad image of the profession, because it is still a showcase of agriculture. On the other hand, we have people who come to make money or make money. audience at the Salon de l'Agriculture, I think they will be particularly targeted. We would like to be heard at least on the main one: the materials which enter France and which do not correspond at all to French production standards, at prices defying all competition", he testifies at the microphone of Europe 1. 

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“We will not give up”

The Young Farmers' Union (JA) joined the convoy while the Vendée branch blocked, with the FNSEA, the entrance to a Leclerc supermarket in Fontenay-le-Comte. These shelves are filled with foreign products, denounces Dorian Deborde, local administrator of the JA union. "We are waiting for the announcements at the Show. If we are not satisfied, we will start again, but eventually we will be much less kind. The State will have to understand that we are here, we are mobilized, and we will not will not give up,” he assures. 

Thousands of supermarket customers were diverted on Saturday. The union representatives obtained a meeting with the store's bosses on Monday at 9 a.m. In the event of an insufficient response from the distributor, he said, the mobilization could continue.