Farmers Make Their Point

Overnight on the 21-22 November dozens of villages and towns in Indre et Loire had their town signs turned upside down. The culprits were local farmers, protesting that the market is skewed against them and that they are competing against unfair rules. The protest has been dubbed 'marche sur la tete', a French saying meaning 'topsy turvy' or 'arse about face' and used when you are angry about a situation that makes no sense.

The peaceful protest started a couple of weeks ago in the Tarn as the brainchild of the Young Farmers (Fr. Jeune agriculteurs) down there. Now it is nationwide. 

 

I photographed the Preuilly town sign on my way back from aquagym on Wednesday. Just in time, because a few minutes later Guillaume and his colleague from the municipal works department turned up with their spanners to return the sign to right way up.

The Indre et Loire farmers hatched their plans at the big Farm Expo in Tours on the weekend. The main focus of the protest is to highlight unfair imports. The farmers had the chance to talk to the Minister for Agriculture at the Expo and felt like he was deaf to their representations.

One of their complaints is that they are completely forbidden from using pesticides in Natura 2000 zones. They say that the easiest way to go pesticide free is to have pasture. But you need grazing animals if you have pasture, and the Government doesn't want any more cows. It's a Catch 22. The farmers don't want to be gardeners making the countryside pretty for tourists. Their job, as they see it, is to produce food. They do not feel they are being given the means to transition to a pesticide free, energy efficient and environmentally friendly and sustainable way of managing their land, but are being pressured to do so nonetheless. All they see is the increasing regulation imposed on them and the resulting difficulties with increasing paperwork and imports from producers that don't have to comply with the same strict rules.

The farmers also feel that the French law which supposedly requires supermarkets to pay a fair price for produce is not enacted regularly enough. There should be an automatic price revision when commodity prices change, but changes to energy, packaging and labour costs do not trigger a review. In addition, the reality is that only 20% of products are covered by this legislation, and most farmers find themselves locked into contracts that are only reviewed annually.

The protesters are hoping to raise awareness of their cause amongst the general public. Some specific examples I've seen highlighted in the news are endives from Spain being sold labelled as 'Saveurs de Ch'ti' (giving consumers the impression they come from the area around Lille); or vegetables such as cabbage, leeks and potatoes, produced in Belgium using chemicals banned in France, but still able to be imported and sold in France. French farmers are unhappy at being forced by the EU to put 4% of their land to fallow from next year, saying they will lose money with machinery left idle and it's like having to renounce 4% of their income, whilst still bearing the same expenses.

Whilst I have a lot of sympathy, especially on the various issues surrounding imported vegetables, some of the farmers arguments do not stack up, such as the idea that fallow land will cost them money, and that they can't farm without pesticides. It's a simple but clever protest though and I applaud them for getting the nation talking and for keeping it peaceful.

I would say the campaign has been quite successful. Social media is absolutely buzzing with people posting photos and asking why their town sign is upside down. Plenty of people out there are ready to respond, and there is a lot of support, at least in terms of people's comments.