In the department, everyone calls him “Bousquet-Castagne”, in reference to his muscular methods. At 64, Serge Bousquet-Cassagne, farmer at the head of the Rural Coordination (CR) of Lot-et-Garonne, native of Fumel, in the north of the department, is one of the leading figures of agricultural anger. He is one of those who, on Saturday January 27, within the CR, called on farmers to join Paris, from Agen, to block the Rungis market (Val-de-Marne). Monday January 29, around thirty tractors set off at 30 kilometers/hour on small roads, before reaching the highway. “Brigitte, prepare the soup, we’re coming!” », “We will not die in silence”could we read on the banners.
Founded in 1991, in the Gers, the movement, already at the time, wanted to break with the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions (FNSEA), judged “accomplice of the measures of the common agricultural policy of 1992, liberal and destructive of the peasant world”. Having become an agricultural union in 1995, the CR defines itself as “apartisane” and “builds its positions not on an ideology or a partisan program, but on common sense and reflection”.
A willing catch-all, the CR is both “anti-ecological”, favorable to protectionism, fighting for community preference and the autonomy of farmers. She stands out for her violent actions in Lot-et-Garonne: ransacking of supermarkets or purchasing centers, commando operations at a merchant, blockades, etc.
Eighteen trials
In December 2022, the CR elected as its head Véronique Le Floc’h, a cattle breeder from Finistère, who succeeds Bernard Lannes, based in Gers. Today, it is the second French agricultural union, neck and neck with the Confédération paysanne, with around 20% of the votes in the elections to the 2019 chambers of agriculture, but the only one growing since 2007. Far behind the FNSEA which totaled 55% of the votes on joint lists with the Young Farmers, but it chairs three chambers of agriculture in Vienne, Haute-Vienne and Lot-et-Garonne.
If he left the spokesperson for the CR of Lot-et-Garonne to a tandem, José Pérez and Karine Duc, and his thousand members, Serge Bousquet-Cassagne, also president of the chamber of agriculture of Lot-et -Garonne since 2013 (re-elected in 2019 with 59.67% of the votes), has been orchestrating for almost thirty years all the agricultural protests in this department, rich in more than seventy productions, including the famous prune. The trade unionist and farmer has had eighteen trials in thirty years. Latest conviction to date, a ten-month prison sentence accompanied by a probationary suspension of eighteen months, pronounced on appeal in the case of Lake Caussade, a 20-hectare water reservoir, brought in 2018 by the chamber of agriculture on its own funds and intended to supply water to around thirty farmers, built completely illegally.
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