WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, UCL AL #347 - Politics, Peasant Confederation: "The government's announcements are a regression" (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 After the large movement in the agricultural community at the end of

January, the government made a slew of announcements at the beginning of
February, which seemed to satisfy the FNSEA. We were able to ask a few
questions to Vincent, a goat breeder in the Var and member of the
Confédération Paysanne, to take stock of the situation and the
continuation of these mobilizations. ---- Can you summarize the
government's announcements and their effects? Why does the FNSEA welcome
this?
The second series of announcements from Gabriel Attal are in fact things
that were already in negotiation with the FNSEA and the JA[1]. These are
measures that only satisfy big farmers, or in fact only some of the big
ones. The decline on the Ecophyto plan is a bit of a smokescreen to
please the FNSEA. The other measures are fiscal and only serve a portion
of the farmers it represents.

It is mainly cereal and olive growers who run the FNSEA, like its
president Arnaud Rousseau who is president of the Avril group[2]: they
are happy. For the other members it is more complicated: cattle breeders
for example are in the process of organizing a resumption of the movement.

Locally we see that the FNSEA and the JA will relaunch actions because
the base is unhappy with the announcements. For us at the Confédération
paysanne, these announcements are more of a regression than a step
forward. We want to continue the movement on our own demands, as we have
been doing from the start.

What are your demands at the Conf?

Right now they focus on two main points. First, income: demanding floor
prices for foodstuffs equivalent to our cost prices, that is to say our
production costs, our remuneration and our social security
contributions. Laws on the subject have been passed in Spain and
Belgium, for example, to ensure fairer prices and prohibit selling at a
loss.

Secondly, we are calling for the cancellation of free trade agreements:
an end to discussions on Mercosur[3]for example. Also, during the
movement, they dared to sign an agreement between Chile and the European
Union. In these agreements, agricultural materials serve as currency: in
the latter case, Chile mainly wants to export rare earths, and Europe
industrial goods. We are demanding an end to these agreements, which are
harmful for European farmers, but also for agriculture in the countries
of the South.

We see that the movement is international, with demonstrations in many
European countries. Are there any prospects for international coordination?

At the Conf' level, we are members of Via Campesina, a grouping of
farmers' unions on a global scale, and of ECVC, its European
counterpart. At the European level we have real discussions,
particularly on the response to the far right, on this subject we have
been quite inspired by the Germans from AbL[4]in recent months. There
was also a big Via Campesina rally in Brussels a few weeks ago during
the last European Commission.

Can you expand on the subject of the extreme right in the agricultural
world?

At the Conf we realize that like everywhere, the far right is
progressing. Over the past twenty years, this has notably involved the
growth of the Rural Coordination (CR), a far-right agricultural union
with truly reactionary and conservative ideas, with slogans bordering on
Pétainism, which has made significant progress in professional
elections. . Even if France only has 400,000 farmers left, we are one of
the most unionized professions so these developments are quickly seen.
Like everywhere, this rise is linked to impoverishment, the collapse of
public services... There are fewer and fewer people available to help us
at the MSA[5], at the agricultural services of the DDT[6]... There is a
real feeling of abandonment among the farmers.

Coming back to the January/February mobilizations, can you tell us how
they started?

At the very beginning, the movement started very spontaneously in the
southwest, mainly on the question of health and administrative
standards. The FNSEA and the JA caught up with the movement afterwards.

It started from the union bases, or even from non-unionized people. This
first time was an opportunity to get in touch with these people. Once
the FNSEA and the JA took over the movement, it was much more
complicated to go to their gatherings: we were no longer welcome. Since
the mobilizations against mega-basins, it has been complicated to come
to an FNSEA gathering with a Conf' flag.

On the side of the Confederation, we also hung up the movement after
this spontaneous departure, but we do not have at all the same demands
as the FNSEA. We are demanding the installation of a million farmers,
smaller farms, fewer pesticides, an end to glyphosate and
neonicotinoids... Quite quickly there was no longer any dialogue possible.

Do you think the mobilizations could resume?

We at the Conf' never "stopped"! Over the last two weeks we have focused
a lot of the fight on large supermarkets and their logistics platforms,
either by blocking the platforms, or by holding farmers' markets in
front of supermarkets, and awareness-raising actions among customers to
show them that our products are often cheaper and of better quality for
direct sale. We are trying to point out that the current system
penalizes everyone: underpaid farmers and consumers who pay prices
inflated by the margins of mass distribution. Now we are trying to
prepare international actions against large grain or dairy groups. We
also want to put pressure on before the agricultural show.

It is important to understand the context: the next professional
agricultural elections will be in January 2025, so in addition to the
real difficulties, there is also a desire on the part of unions to
occupy the field in preparation for the elections. The subject will
remain on the 2024 agenda for the months to come.

What is your assessment of the movement so far?

Even if for us, we consider that we are currently in defeat, we can
still see that these mobilizations have been able to give visibility to
our struggles and our demands to the general public. The collective work
"Taking back the land from the machines" clearly develops the idea that
the changes necessary for a transformation towards peasant agriculture
can only be made if farmers have the support of the rest of society. We
were able to see moments of rapprochement with the population during the
movement, and that is great progress.

Comments collected by N. Bartosek

To validate

[1]The Young Farmers, an agricultural union very close to the FNSEA

[2]Agro-industrial group specializing in oils, having achieved 9 billion
euros in turnover in 2022

[3]Southern Common Market, free trade zone bringing together Argentina,
Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia

[4]Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschafttra, German equivalent
of the Peasant Confederation

[5]Agricultural social mutuality, compulsory social protection scheme
for agricultural professions

[6]Departmental Directorate of Territories

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Confederation-paysanne-Les-annonces-du-gouvernement-sont-une-regression
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