Several hundred tractors flocked to Paris on Wednesday to demonstrate farmers denouncing restrictions on the use of pesticides and other obligations that weigh on their sector.
“Almost 500 tractors” and “more than 2,000 farmers” were to move from the south-west of the French capital to the Esplanade des Invalides in the center, according to the first agricultural union, FNSEA.
The mobilization was triggered by the decision of the French government on January 23 to withdraw the authorization of neonicotinoid insecticides for sugar beet cultivation, after the Court of Justice of the European Union declared an exception to be illegal.
Neonicotinoids, which are poisonous to bees and have been banned since 2018, had received an exemption for two years. This allowed them to be applied preventively to beet seeds to protect them from jaundice, a viral disease transmitted by aphids.
“As a user of neonicotinoids, I don’t feel like I’m poisoning the world,” complains Damien Greffin, farmer and trade unionist. “At this rate, agriculture will disappear,” he adds, pointing to the ban on the insecticide phosmet, which he says is “endangering” the cultivation of cherries, or – soon – a herbicide for chicory.
“We want to show the government that we cannot ban inputs without an alternative,” adds another farmer, Cyril Milard.
The sector’s third union, the Confédération paysanne, did not join the protest. In a press release, she lamented those who reject “any ecological progress”. “The striving for social progress is opposed here to the most reactionary and conservative positions,” said the organization, which is classified on the left.
For its part, environmental NGO Générations Futures recalled that neonicotinoids were “more toxic than the infamous (insecticide) DDT” that was banned in the 1970s, and condemned practices “worthy of 1960s agriculture, not 2020s agriculture “.
Complaints have been rife in the agricultural world in recent months on various issues: farmers have rallied in small groups across the country, here to denounce the increase in their production costs due to rising energy prices, there to claim they can store water in their crops water.
Their last major mobilization dates back to November 27, 2019, when a thousand tractors carried out slug operations on the ring road around Paris.
The protesters have already denounced a tightening of the rules on the application of synthetic pesticides through the creation of no-treatment zones (ZNT), strips of a few meters near homes where the use of these substances is prohibited.