An imitation leather sofa in the middle of the dual carriageway, an improvised counter on a pallet, a generator and tractors for tens of meters… At the intersection of the A9 and A54 motorways, in Nîmes, the roadblock installed by angry farmers since Wednesday January 24 became the headquarters of the Gard mobilization. On the fifth day, Monday January 29, the determination does not seem to weaken. Around fifty people – men and women – take turns to hold the blockade, day and night. All around, the secondary road network is saturated.
Here, despite fatigue, the demonstrators are resolute. They believe that the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, did not respond “to the specificities of the region”. “We do not want to go to Paris and risk losing this dam, which has become an emblematic place of our struggle, underlines the president of the Departmental Federation of Farmers’ Unions, David Sève. On this highway [qui longe l’arc méditerranéen depuis la frontière espagnole] thousands of heavy goods vehicles pass through every day filled with fruits and vegetables from Spain or Morocco, which are killing our agriculture. »
With more than 5,000 farms, nearly 100,000 jobs (most of which are seasonal) and an annual turnover of 900 million euros, according to the regional directorate for food, agriculture and forestry, agriculture represents the second economic lung of the department, after tourism.
” Everybody is concerned “
“Our particularity is that we have a great diversity of crops and agricultural profiles, often with quite small plots, and a climate which goes from drought to floods then to frost, sometimes just a few weeks apart. For the last three years, we have had an agricultural calamity every quarterobserves Jean-Louis Portal, winegrower and elected to the Gard Chamber of Agriculture. We are not a consumer agriculture of the common agricultural policy. We are smaller operators. We had the feeling that the government was not taking our problems into account. »
Between the Cévennes and the Mediterranean, the 50,000 hectares of vines take up more than half of the Gard agricultural area and it is this sector which seems to be leading the protest. In addition to requests for relief from administrative procedures and direct cash flow assistance, the wine industry is hoping for structural measures, “to allow definitive grubbing up in order to support the operator at the end of his activity who has no buyer”. Or “aid for temporary grubbing up while the wine crisis passes”, continues Mr. Portal.
You have 45% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.