“Planting is being carried out in fairly good conditions, although some soils are still heavy”rejoices Benoît Piétrement, president of the specialized council for large crops of FranceAgriMer and producer of cereals from the Marne. “It hasn’t rained for two weeks. The absence of rain is like a ray of sunshine »duck. After almost a year of almost continuous rainfall in much of the national territory, with the exception of the southern area affected by drought, the relief is palpable. This weather, which, in 2024, has reduced soft wheat production by a quarter and the harvest by the same proportion, has tested the nerves of farmers and public coffers. A fertile ground for a new agricultural mobilization? Probably, especially since sheep and cattle farmers are affected by health crises.
It is, in any case, the analysis carried out by the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions (FNSEA), associated with Young Farmers (JA), which sounded the wake-up call on October 22. He called for a national mobilization starting in mid-November, less than a year after angry demonstrations by farmers that multiplied for several weeks. The winter break for cereal producers marks the calendar for the resumption of actions. But a great electoral event is also coming, long awaited by the agricultural world: in fact, farmers are invited to vote, on January 31, 2025, to elect their representatives in the chambers of agriculture.
This electoral meeting, organized every six years, allows the five agricultural unions – the FNSEA, the JA, the Rural Coordination, the Peasant Confederation and the Family Farmers Defense Movement – to measure their representativeness. Furthermore, your funding source depends on your results. The FNSEA and the JA have decided once again to form a common front, an alliance that has assured them of being the majority until then. But they see the rise, on the ground, of the Rural Coordination, which had become the second union force, passing ahead of the Peasant Confederation during the previous consultation.
Panels, wool and manure.
At the local level, protest actions have already been carried out in recent weeks. On Monday, November 4, winegrowers members of the JA and the FDSEA, departmental branches of the FNSEA, Vaucluse and Gard, demonstrated in front of the Lidl establishments in Orange (Vaucluse) and Bagnols-sur-Cèze (Gard) to protest against the sale at a loss, according to them, of Côtes-du-Rhône designation of origin wines. A few days before, on the eve of All Saints’ Day, around fifty farmers demonstrated in the Vosges, at the request of the Paysanne Confederation, against the decision of the dairy giant Lactalis to reduce its revenue in France, under the slogan “Lactalis killed me”.
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