It is an understatement to say that the welcome planned for the Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau, responsible for closing the 78e annual congress of the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions (FNSEA) in Dunkirk (North), Thursday March 28, was not warm. The representatives of the agricultural union, gathered in the amphitheater, were distributed signs indicating their region of origin and the different demands, from the use of phytosanitary products to those of NGT (“new genomic techniques”new GMOs) through a breeding plan or water storage.
A communications operation orchestrating a reminder of the mobilizations organized in January and February. This assembly was to welcome the minister in silence, even if questions were raised before being quickly repressed and the stamping of feet on the ground resonated in the room. Other questions were heard at the end of the speech, as expected. On the platform, behind the minister’s back, nineteen members of the FNSEA board of directors, including only one woman, were seated. A first for this type of exercise.
In this context, Mr. Fesneau, “taken like a rabbit before a pack of hunters”, as one union member described it, delivered his speech at full speed. A way, perhaps, of proving that the government was following the pace set by the FNSEA which criticizes it for not having the right pace? The minister therefore recalled that the government had “engaged on 62 then 67 measures », before adding that“ they do not come out of nowhere, they are the product of a dialogue with your national leaders”and to specify: “ I’m the one who does with you. » It is difficult to be more explicit about the FNSEA’s management of the government’s agricultural policy. A “co-management” often denounced by other agricultural unions, such as the Peasant Confederation or the Rural Coordination.
“How and when? »
A little earlier, Arnaud Rousseau, the president of the first French agricultural union, had castigated “ those who play the old broken record of co-management, we, at the FNSEA, make proposals, we obtain progress. We are proud of the work accomplished, we are not going to change.” Before the congress, he had also put pressure on the government by declaring: “For the 62 measures announced by the government, we ask: how and when? »
Mr. Fesneau therefore once again detailed all the measures taken since the start of the agricultural anger, trying to clarify the timetables. As a preamble, he underlined that at the request of the FNSEA, agriculture will be declared of major general interest in the next agricultural law. A declaration which will give more weight to agriculture in the face of environmental issues in the realization of certain projects. He specified that the text will be, after a further postponement, finally presented on Wednesday April 3, in the Council of Ministers, then submitted to the National Assembly in mid-May and to the Senate in the second half of June.
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