Farmers are not releasing pressure on the executive. The majority agricultural unions FNSEA and Young Farmers (JA) were received this Tuesday morning in Matignon by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal to try to find a way out of the crisis despite the numerous pledges already given by the government. This meeting took place in a still tense context, a meeting planned at the Élysée that same day was postponed.
A little over two weeks after the end of the Agricultural Show, the objective for the unions was clear: to ensure that the 63 measures promised by the executive to calm the anger of farmers were clearly dated. “We want a clear timetable on the five blocks which are pensions, means of production (phytosanitary, water, etc.), competitiveness, cash flow measures and remuneration,” Arnaud Rousseau explained to Le Figaro, after the meeting, the president of the FNSEA.
“We are told that we have obtained a lot of things, which is true,” he admits. But all this must now be effectively done to finally emerge from this agricultural crisis. We want to know when and how the promised measures will be deployed. We understood that the agricultural orientation law was coming quickly, but there are many things that do not depend on the law. Such as single farm control or cash flow measures. All this needs to be more clearly dated.”
The unions will be received again at Matignon next Monday, just before the FNSEA Annual Congress, which will be held this year in Dunkirk. With the aim of a meeting with the President of the Republic at the beginning of April, hopes the FNSEA.
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A few hours earlier, Arnaud Rousseau had called on the executive to “tackle the big issues” in an interview with Les Échos published this Tuesday, calling in particular for acceleration on the issue of water storage and “fiscal measures” allowing to modernize and transfer farms.
On water storage, for which the government has already announced simplification measures, he asks to see concrete effects very quickly: “We must start by making our administration and our procedures much more efficient. This can involve decrees or regulations, and therefore move quickly.”
Arnaud Rousseau also calls for “a tax incentive measure which could push some to transfer earlier and accelerate the modernization of our agriculture”, recalling that “of the 400,000 farms in France, at least 150,000 are affected by retirement within five at seven years old. He suggests increasing from 20% to 50% the reduction that farmers benefit from on the tax on undeveloped land, which “would cost around 150 million to public finances” according to him.
The president of the JA Arnaud Gaillot, for his part, recognized progress which is going “in the right direction”, but deplores the slow deployment of the measures announced by the government. “When you are the elected politician, it is you who command your different ministries. And so we must shake the coconut tree morning, noon and evening,” argued Arnaud Gaillot Tuesday morning on RTL.
The government highlights the work already carried out, with “62 commitments” made by Gabriel Attal, gradually declined, whether at the European level with fallows and meadows, or at the national level with a reflection on phytosanitary measures, the support for livestock breeding or organic agriculture.
In addition to several hundred million euros of emergency measures announced, the government has satisfied numerous demands from agricultural unions, first and foremost a “shock of simplification” to facilitate the daily lives of farmers overwhelmed by complex paperwork and standards deemed unsuitable, for example for the management of hedges. At the heart of the discussions is also the agricultural orientation bill which will be presented to the Council of Ministers on March 29.
The protest movement has subsided since the beginning of February but actions are still carried out sporadically. On Monday, farmers demonstrated near Toulouse to protest against a delay in payment of European aid; Tuesday morning, members of the FNSEA du Nord dumped straw in front of the premises of the Regional Directorate for the Environment and Planning (Dreal) in Gravelines and hung a banner proclaiming “No ecological transition without viable agriculture! “.
