They only form 1.5% of the active population in France but it is a traditionally key electorate: the presidential candidates are seeking the support of farmers on Wednesday, at a time when the gap is closing between Emmanuel Macron and his pursuers. Eleven days before the first round, Valérie Pécresse (LR), Marine Le Pen (RN), Eric Zemmour (Reconquest), the communist Fabien Roussel and the iconoclast Jean Lassalle made the trip to Besançon for this meeting bringing together a majority of farmers – between 900 to 1,000 – and which comes one month after the Agricultural Show.
Left-wing candidates skip
Others, notably on the left such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon (LFI), Anne Hidalgo (PS) or Yannick Jadot (EELV), have skipped the impasse, being also strongly booed when the announcer announced that they had declined the invitation. From short circuits to the withdrawal of free trade agreements, via the total abolition of pesticides, the 12 candidates for the Elysée Palace are teeming with ideas to lend a hand to an agriculture hit by soaring production and material costs. agricultural raw materials caused by the war in Ukraine.
Especially since the profession is undergoing a slow decline. Metropolitan France has 389,000 farms, according to the provisional results of the 2020 agricultural census. This is 100,000 fewer than in 2010 and four times fewer than in 1970. And nearly one in five farm households lives below the threshold of poverty (18%, against 15% of the French population), according to INSEE.
Reconciling agriculture and ecology for Macron
“Leading the (ecological) transitions is necessary but that must not make us lose sight of our nurturing mission”, declared Emmanuel Macron. “We have long opposed agriculture and ecology, but I believe in this reconciliation of agendas”, he added, saying he wanted to “amplify what we have put in place”. The president-candidate, taken on Wednesday by a Defense Council followed by a Council of Ministers – before a new campaign trip Thursday to Charente-Maritime – addressed the meeting by videoconference in a message recorded Tuesday at his campaign headquarters .
For her part, the candidate of the National Rally Marine Le Pen, in second place in the polls of voting intentions in the first round behind Emmanuel Macron, launched: “My project: it is the sovereignty of our country”. The candidate has been on the offensive against the “nonsense of the ecologists” or even the European Commission and the World Trade Organization (WTO) “which hinder any effective reaction to the current crisis”. She also condemned the “intolerable aggression and degradation” against farmers but was booed when she said she wanted to create a status for animals.
Fabien Roussel highly applauded on stage
Playing on the absence of his rivals on the left, which he did not fail to underline, the communist Fabien Roussel was heartily applauded, showing himself to be at ease, joking and arousing the laughter of an audience traditionally rather right of the chessboard. “He’s good!”, shouted a farmer, applauding, when the communist spoke of nationalizing a bank to help young farmers obtain loans to settle.
“Eating good meat, raised in France, is essential and important. We must defend French produce, the quality of French products, it is not to be French,” said Fabien Roussel. “Those who don’t want to eat meat, I respect them so much, but let them not impose their model of society”.
Jadot would have changed his mind, according to the FNSEA
According to the president of the FNSEA Christiane Lambert, the environmental candidate Yannick Jadot would have accepted the invitation before changing his mind. He went to Margny-sur-Matz (Oise) on Wednesday on the theme of rurality, whose mayors were very much in demand by the candidates to obtain the 500 sponsorships and want to make their demands heard in the campaign.
For its part, La France insoumise, whose candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon is best placed on the left, is trying to mobilize voters, with a meeting on the theme of “the union of working-class neighborhoods” organized in Saint-Denis , in the suburbs of Paris.