A few days before the Paris Agricultural Show, farmers are maintaining pressure on the executive. The Prime Minister detailed the orientations of a new agricultural bill.
As the farmers’ protest movement resumes in the West and South of France, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal held a press conference this Wednesday to detail the “main directions” of a new agricultural bill, and improve remuneration in this sector: “We heard the farmers’ call, we made commitments and we are keeping them. This is only the beginning of a new page that we are writing with them.”
Gabriel Attal promises in particular the rapid classification of the agricultural production sector among the professions in tension, which will open the way to the employment of foreign personnel in this sector and will facilitate the allocation of visas for foreign seasonal workers on French farms, or to include the notion of “food sovereignty” in the law and specified that the agricultural orientation bill would arrive on March 12 in the Senate.
Gabriel Attal also announced that France was going to abandon the indicator it currently uses to measure the reduction in the use of pesticides, Nodu, defended by environmental NGOs but contested by the majority agricultural union FNSEA and the agricultural industry. pesticides. “I am announcing to you that the reference indicator for monitoring our objective of reducing phytosanitary products will no longer be the Franco-French Nodu but the European indicator. This is in line with our desire to avoid any overtransposition. demand from farmershe declared, while affirming that he did not want “give up (the) ambition to reduce the use of pesticides by 50% by 2030”.
Measures considered too vague by the demonstrators. “It seems that the French government is trying to calm the anger of farmers before the opening of the Salon de l’Agriculture on February 24. I hope that is not their goal, but the government’s proposals really need to be be put on paper” explains a protester.
Three days before the opening of the Agricultural Show, a group of farmers blocked a section of the A62 motorway between Agen and Montauban. Others have invaded the headquarters of large agri-food groups, such as that of Lactalis in Laval.