Demonstration by farmers in Paris to protest in particular against the ban on certain pesticides, February 8, 2023 (AFP / BERTRAND GUAY)
“We are told + get over it +”: perched on their tractors, more than a thousand farmers marched in Paris on Wednesday against the “agricultural decline” induced according to them by the ban on pesticides which they consider essential to their activity.
More than 500 machines (620 according to the count of the majority agricultural union FNSEA behind the mobilization), including a sugar beet harvester, a monster of yellow metal, left their Ile-de-France farms before dawn to join the center of Paris.
The tractors covered the 500 meters of track separating the Hôtel des Invalides from the Alexandre III bridge, before leaving the capital in the afternoon.
On the Esplanade des Invalides, the demonstrators placed a powerful sound system, a container converted into a makeshift platform decorated with bales of straw and crates of apples. As well as two cows that have tasted the lawn.
“Who can think that we can do agriculture without any chemistry?”, Launched from the platform the president of the FNSEA, Christiane Lambert. For her, society is “lulled in illusions” in wanting to believe that it was possible to feed the planet by freeing itself from synthetic pesticides.
“Agricultural decline has no place in Europe”, also hammered the president of the majority agricultural union.
Trigger of the mobilization: the decision of the government, on January 23, to waive issuing a derogation allowing the use of neonicotinoid insecticides for the cultivation of sugar beet, in accordance with a decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU ) hailed by environmental NGOs.
Without these toxic molecules for bees, beet growers fear yield drops due to jaundice transmitted by aphids. They bet that manufacturers will have to obtain supplies from abroad to manufacture sugar, alcohol or bioethanol, with beets grown without French and European “constraints”.
The union officials were received in the morning by the Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau who invited them to return on Thursday and promised “full compensation” in the event of losses linked to jaundice, Franck Sander reported to the forum. who chairs the section of the FNSEA specializing in beets (CGB).
The announcement garnered meager applause.
– “Environmentalist pressure” –
Even if it’s useful for making an impression, “it swells me to come by tractor to Paris”, remarked a little earlier Mathieu Beaudoin, 38-year-old grain farmer, aboard his machine shaken by the cobblestones, with the Eiffel Tower targeted.
Demonstration by farmers near the Eiffel Tower, in Paris, to protest in particular against the ban on certain pesticides, on February 8, 2023 (AFP/Bertrand GUAY)
In front of the greetings of the passers-by crossed on the way, he believes that these people who “are happy to see us, tell us at the same time that we must wash more than white” – by cultivating with less pesticides – “while they buy foreign products that do not meet our standards”.
“People don’t want to pay more, organic is in trouble,” adds the farmer from Seine-et-Marne.
At the same time, “we are being put more and more constraints on our backs and we are told + Get over it +”, he laments.
“We feel persecuted”, summarizes Grégoire Bouillant, 40-year-old cereal farmer, who denounces “environmentalist pressure”. “We try to lower the treatments as much as possible but we have to protect the plants,” he says from the cabin of his tractor.
Political leaders came to show their support, such as the president (LR) of Hauts-de-France Xavier Bertrand, the patroness of Renaissance deputies Aurore Bergé and elected National Rally.
Parade of tractors in Paris, to protest against the “obligations” imposed on farmers, in particular the ban on certain pesticides, on February 8, 2023 (AFP/BERTRAND GUAY)
“There is no question of doing the same bullshit on agriculture” as on nuclear power, launched Xavier Bertrand from the podium, in an allusion to the closure of the Fessenheim power station.
Environmental associations have spoken out against this mobilization.
“By demonstrating for the right to apply insecticides + bee killers + for the treatment of sugar beets, a handful of farmers seek to return to the past and sacrifice the future”, affirms Agir pour l’environnement in a press release .
Future Generations denounces for its part a “retrograde attachment to these hyper-toxic insecticides which have nothing to do in a modern agriculture that is even slightly respectful of the environment” and calls on “the government not to give in to pressure”.
© 2023 AFP
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