A welcoming committee of farmers slept in front of the Agricultural Show before Emmanuel Macron's visit on Saturday February 24 to a minefield, as the anger is now crystallizing on his person after the Elysian blunder around the invitation of Earth Uprisings, an environmentalist collective reviled by many operators.

In front of the Salon in Paris, on the esplanade where the majority union, the FNSEA, is located, the night was calm.

Some operators have slept on straw, and the mines are tired.

A group of farmers from the competing union, Rural Coordination, arrived around 6 a.m.

The Head of State will come to inaugurate the Agricultural Show as presidents have usually done since Jacques Chirac, "but not like every year", warned Friday evening the boss of the majority agricultural union FNSEA Arnaud Rousseau.

Implied, it will not be a walk in the park free from boos and demonstrations of distrust.

“It is certain that Macron risks being whistled in the aisles but we must move forward, we must continue to discuss to get things done, concretely,” his vice-president, Luc Smessaert, confides to AFP , farmer in Oise.

The head of state plans to meet the leaders of "all agricultural unions before the official opening" then "to contact all those who want to discuss as I do every year", according to a message on X.

Since day one, I have been committed to supporting farmers and the agricultural and food sovereignty of France.



From the start of the current crisis, I asked the government to provide concrete responses with methodical monitoring.

This is what is happening.…

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) February 23, 2024

Arnaud Rousseau warned the president "that before marching and taking photos, it was first necessary to announce to the peasants what they were waiting for and what they had been demanding for weeks", during a speech to his troops of the FNSEA and the allied union Young Farmers (JA) in the evening in front of the doors of the show, Porte de Versailles in Paris.

The demonstrators heavily whistled the president's name.

Under a sign reading “Manu Tchao!”, Romain Garnier explains: “If things don’t change, he has to leave. With what he’s given us so far, it’s chao.”

“Frankly,” says an FNSEA executive, “we have no control over anything. They are boiling hot.”

Farmers prepare food during a gathering near the Porte de Versailles, February 23, 2024 in Paris © Ludovic MARIN / AFP

Arnaud Rousseau and his counterpart Véronique Le Floc'h, president of Rural Coordination, the 2nd French agricultural union, still agreed to see the president - "if he can come back", added Véronique Le Floc'h.

"Arm of honor"

The crisis, which had been brewing since the fall, exploded from January 18, leading to two weeks of highway blockages, finally lifted on February 1.

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal made several bursts of announcements on dozens of subjects: pesticides, standards, administrative simplifications, aid to breeders or wine growers, controls in supermarkets against fraud on the French origin of products, new law enshrining agriculture as a fundamental interest of the nation...

A police officer stands in front of tractors blocking the A6 motorway, January 31, 2024 near Chilly-Mazarin in Essonne © EMMANUEL DUNAND / AFP/Archives

Environmental NGOs denounce an ecological decline, in particular on pesticides whose use will no longer be measured as before, but their speech against intensive agriculture, like that of the anti-globalization union Confédération paysanne, is barely audible in the face of the existential protests of farmers .

They agreed to unblock the roads because they appreciate that their demands are starting to be taken into account by the executive.

But they continue to demand rapid and concrete actions to improve their income and meet their demand for dignity.

The members of the majority unions, especially in the major cereal crops, were especially furious to learn that the Élysée wanted to have them debate on Saturday, among other NGOs, with the radical collective of the Uprisings of the Earth, which had illustrated in March 2023 during a day of clashes around an artificial water reservoir construction site in Sainte-Soline (Deux-Sèvres) and which the government failed to dissolve.

A farmer takes care of a cow before the opening of the international agricultural show, on February 23, 2024 in Paris © Dimitar DILKOFF / AFP

“The president, he gave us a huge arm of honor yesterday so, what we are waiting for now is for him to announce things,” explained Vincent Bouvrain, a farmer in Seine-et-Marne, in the Parisian demonstration of the FNSEA.

The idea of ​​a major debate, along the lines of those organized at the time of the "yellow vest" crisis, therefore came to naught, leading to its cancellation on Friday evening.

It remains to be seen how long Emmanuel Macron will be in “contact” with the participants at the Show.

With AFP

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