WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, UCL AL #341 - Unionism, Fanny, Peasant Confederation: " Violence is on the other side, on the side of the defense of private interests " (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Interview with Fanny Metrat, spokesperson for the Conf' de l'Ardèche:

origin of the Conf', current struggles, local and international issues,
convergence of struggles, with a clearly anti-capitalist perspective.
---- If, in our Unionism pages, we regularly mention the CGT and
Solidaires, the Peasant Confederation has very little presence there.
Peasant comrades regretting that the actions of the Conf' are often
relayed in the Ecology and not Unionism pages. This interview, in two
parts, with Fanny Metrat, spokesperson for the Conf' de l'Ardèche,
elected to the National Committee of the Peasant Confederation and
responsible for pastoralism and international issues, looks back at the
origin of the Conf', its current struggles and deal with local and
international issues from the point of view of peasant unionism, always
with the convergence of struggles and a clearly anti-capitalist
perspective in mind.

Libertarian alternative: Hi Fanny, can you introduce yourself ?

Fanny: Well, so, I'm Fanny Métrat, I'm a farmer, in Ardèche with my
partner, Manu. We raise ewes for lambs, for the meat that we cut and
sell directly. We also make chestnuts which we transform into flour,
jams which we sell in producers' stores. And we are in a very steep,
very wild area, on the few flat terraces around the hamlet, we make a
little potatoes which we sell to the local Biocoop.

We have been settled since 2009. My partner is the son of a farmer but
we did not take over the family farm, we settled outside the family
framework, after having lived quite a bit in West Africa, being a worker
agricultural and I was also an employee of the Confédération paysanne de
la Drôme around twenty years ago.

And then as soon as we settled down as peasants, I got involved in the
Peasant Confederation of my department in Ardèche. I became spokesperson
for Conf' in Ardèche quite quickly, already knowing the house well. And
then, since this year, since 2023, I have been a member of the National
Committee of the Peasant Confederation. And I am responsible for
pastoralism and international issues for the Conf'.

Ok, so how did you settle in ?

Fanny: We took over a farm, 100  % leased, all rented. This allowed us
to settle down without having too much money with a small house for
rent, in the hamlet, and the land and the sheepfold for rent too. The
status of tenancy, which is a hyper-privileged agricultural status, is
the fruit of numerous struggles of farmers and peasants against landowners.

I'm talking about it because the status of tenancy is being undermined
by the owners' associations and for us, at the Conf', tenancy is a
status to be defended tooth and nail, and that therefore makes it
possible to install new generations with very few means, in fact.

Fanny Métrat is a breeder from Ardèche and elected to the National
Committee of the Peasant Confederation.
Okay, that allows you to not necessarily be either inheriting or
dependent on banks...

Fanny: Yes, that's important for us. We are still descendants of a
generation of peasants, the working peasants who defended the fact that
land is a tool of work and that we must above all not speculate or
capitalize on it. Whether it is land or agricultural buildings in
general, for the sheepfold, everything is rented.

So we are moving away from the logic of inheritance, and then from
agriculture which since the 1960s has developed under the cover of
modernization with a huge amount of capital and under the control of the
banks...

Fanny: Absolutely, afterward, there are a lot of peasants renting the
land. After what we also say is that with the crappy pensions we have,
unfortunately, there are plenty of peasants with pensions of 400/500
euros per month, they feel obliged ·es to speculate on land or buildings
because they don't really have a choice.

And so what we say is that logic is global. As long as there is a crappy
pension for peasants, as long as we have a cheap pension, we will not be
able to really counter this logic of speculating at the end of the
career on everything that is built, land ...

And so, what is the Peasant Confederation then ?

Fanny: The peasant confederation was born in 1987 from the meeting of
two unions. On the one hand, the Peasant Workers, also called Working
Peasants (this has evolved over time), a union which split with the
majority union by converging with the labor movements of the time,
notably Lip, saying: "  peasants/workers same fight  ". And it came
precisely from this logic of peasant bosses, peasant owners.

At that time, in the 1970s/1980s, there was a whole section of the
peasantry who rebelled against this peasant model, and on Larzac, in the
fights against the military camp, Bernard Lambert spoke by saying: "  We
will never again be Versailles people, peasants/workers, same fight ! »
As a result, there is this historical branch which is part of the Conf.

And on the other hand, a more reformist branch, the FNSP, the National
Federation of Peasant Unions, which was also born from a split from the
FNSEA, but more reformist, closer to the PS of the time . And it was
this meeting of these two unions which, in 1987, created the Peasant
Confederation.

Since La Conf' has evolved a lot. In the 2000s, with José Bové, Conf'
came to the forefront and gained notoriety. We say we are a
non-corporatist union, we have always been part of the major social and
ecological convergences of the social movement, to a greater or lesser
extent depending on the national secretariats which have succeeded one
another.

In any case, since the fights against factory farms, the Farm of a
Thousand Cows  [1], since 2013-2014, our fights have been re-anchored in
the social movement. We are part of the organizations that also created
the Earth Uprisings in January 2021, in Notre-Dame-des-Landes. There are
fights like this, like the voluntary GMO reapers, which anchor us in the
social movement and in convergences.

In terms of the presence of the Conf' in the territory, what is your
location ? And how is the Conf' organized ?

Fanny: The Peasant Confederation is present in all departments, in
mainland France and overseas. The departmental peasant confederations
are sovereign. Afterwards, at the regional level, we elect
representatives from each region who are therefore elected to the
National Committee. We therefore have a National Committee which
represents around sixty people, and then there is a National Secretariat
made up of five, seven or nine people.

We must be clear that we are a representative union and that as such we
are not clearly breaking away, given that we are participating in
professional elections. These are the elections of the chambers of
agriculture which, depending on the percentage of votes, give us weight
in the representations of all departmental, regional and national
agricultural organizations. Organizations like the CDOA, the
Departmental Agricultural Orientation Commission, which decides where we
will grant aid, to whom we give more, to whom we give.[...]

By being a representative union, we have positions, we have seats, in
these organizations. Depending on the percentages in professional
elections, we are more or less represented in these institutions.

To get an idea of the FNSEA, what is the weight of the Conf' in
agricultural unionism ? And in terms of distribution and anchoring in
the territory, the regions where you are most established...

Fanny: At the national level, during the last professional elections
(December 2022), the Peasant Confederation represented 20  % of the
votes cast. But here, locally in Ardèche, we are almost at 40  %, there
are departments like Loire-Atlantique, Ardèche where we are well
established, Guadeloupe also where we won the Chamber of Agriculture.
But in hyper-cereal areas, where there are few activists, we may not be
representative, we need more than 15% of the  votes to be locally
representative and sit in all these organizations.

So, in April, the Conf' was in Congress. What comes out of this ?

Fanny: We held our last congress in April, where we elected the National
Committee, but this congress was especially marked by what happened in
Sainte-Soline. It was just a few weeks later. The Conf' was one of the
organizations that called for mobilization.

There was a real trauma linked to Sainte-Soline. We have a member of the
National Secretariat at the time who was one of the people who welcomed
the seriously injured, who held Serge in his arms while waiting for help
to arrive and it remains a real trauma for those who were present. But
we also have certain peasants from the more reformist Conf', who were
not there and[...]did not necessarily understand that the Conf' could be
put forward so much in these fights.

There were big debates regarding modes of action. "  What is
non-violence ? Where are the limits ? » It was all really exciting. But
we clearly saw that the Conf' is moving quite a bit, evolving, and there
is a young generation who grew up with Notre-Dame-des-Landes and the
creation of Zads and all these local struggles and the message was very
clear: we continue on the momentum, we converge with the Uprisings of
the Earth and others and above all, by asserting ourselves as
anti-capitalist in all our press releases or in all the reflections and
positions of the Conf'.

Is this a clear and assertive position at the confederal level ?

Fanny: Yes. So, it was quite clear, actually. More reformist positions
found themselves increasingly in the minority. Afterwards, we have
always said that we need to walk on our two legs, that we are a union,
and despite everything being representative, we insist on it.[...]

We are aware that working with institutions is also part of the Conf's
action. But we are also clearly in favor of modes of action, such as
civil disobedience, which may appear violent in the eyes of some, but
which, for us, do not amount to violence, as long as they are symbolic
actions, like in Sainte-Soline, it was just going to put a flag in the
middle of the basin construction site !

We clearly reiterated that it was against symbols of agro-industry and
that the police repression was in return so violent that it locked us
into something violent. As a result, we are described as evil
eco-terrorists, but the violence is on the other side, on the side of
the defense of private interests.

Little visit in June 2018 to the Conf' on the Bolloré vineyard, in joy
and good humor. Denunciation of land grabbing by the billionaire in
France and around the world.
The question of water is today the big peasant and social question which
will be the burning issue of the coming years ?

Fanny: Yes, it's the hot issue. And it's been rising for years, so of
course, there were pesticides, and that remains one of the burning
issues, GMOs which are also making a comeback, it's a crazy thing, we're
fighting at the level European in relation to directives on new GMOs.

But the water issue, the thing is that, for ordinary people, that's it,
people, anyone is starting to realize that there is a real problem. The
number of villages, small towns, which had their tap water cut off last
year, last summer, that's concrete. People realize that water management
is one of the essential issues for the years to come.

And as a result, obviously, water, we peasants, since we use this
resource to irrigate crops, gardens, certain trees or whatever, suddenly
we find ourselves no longer alone. are to question the history of water
management. And especially everything related to irrigation. For
example, there are vineyard irrigation projects in Ardèche, by pumping
water from the Rhône, it's crazy stuff !

We would never have imagined seeing this, even ten years ago. If we had
mentioned these projects ten years ago at the Chamber of Agriculture,
there would have been uproar. And there we find ourselves in a hyper
minority, hyper isolated in the peasant environment when we dare to
criticize this kind of project.

At the Conf, we are the only ones, in the agricultural sector, to dare
to say: in fact, water is common, and we will have to consult with
everyone. For the FNSEA, it's just not possible. Water, for large
irrigating farmers, belongs to them. It is a resource that must remain
in the hands of the agricultural profession. And here we are getting
screwed on these questions by the Rural Coordination and the FNSEA.

Here we have two completely antagonistic approaches. On the one hand,
the land and resources on the earth belong to me, it is private
property, I am the owner. And what you defend at the Conf', an approach
in terms of general interest, in fact, no particular interest at all.

Fanny: Yes. We are in this position of general interest. And on the
other hand, it is very clear that we cannot ask farmers who have always
irrigated, eaten pesticides to death in their fields, spread pesticides,
inputs, etc., overnight to change their model. It would just be utopian
to imagine that. We understand that.

We are not individually against the farmers who are locked into this
system. But we have been pushing public policies for twenty years,
asking for the transition to be organized. Let us help these farmers to
evolve, to change their practices little by little. Except that here, we
arrive at something urgent where global warming, the collapse of
biodiversity, will force...

Finally, either we continue to go straight into the wall, or we will
have to make changes, but radical ones. And the problem is that we
understand that farmers are trapped in this system. For them it's not
intellectually possible to imagine switching to organic overnight or
anything. It's just that we wasted so much time.

Comments collected by David (UCL Chambéry)

To validate

[1] "  A thousand cows on a factory farm  " , Alternative Libertaire, n°
242, September 2014.


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