Demonstration of farmers in Toulouse against the increase in the GNR
• AFP
About fifteen tractors and dozens of farmers from Haute-Garonne blocked access to a refinery near Toulouse on Thursday, to protest against the rise in the price of raw materials, in particular non-road diesel (GNR), noted an AFP photographer.
” Astop pumping us” or “Who sows misery reaps anger”, could we read on the tractors and trucks dumping straw, manure and tires in front of this oil depot, located in Lespinasse about ten kilometers north of Toulouse.
?? To protest against the rise in the price of oil, about fifty farmers block this Thursday morning the only refinery of Haute-Garonne in #Lespinasse. The young farmers deposited straw, manure and tires in front of the oil depot. pic.twitter.com/rWM7kQp5L9
— viaOccitanie (@viaOccitanieTV) February 17, 2022
The operation, led by young farmers (JA) of Haute-Garonne, “is a cry of alarm”, indicated to AFP Nicolas Ates, general secretary of the union, declares that the farmers of the department “are not doing any more”.
” The GNR went from 80 cents including tax in March 2021 to 1.15 euros today: that may imply, tomorrow, the end of Haut-Garonne farms, because we are one of the last departments in France in terms of agricultural income,” he says.
Consuming several thousand liters of RNG per year, depending on the size of the farm, farmers are struggling to cope with the successive increases in the barrel of oil, which is around the 90 euro mark.
“But everything else is also increasing: tires, scrap metal, nitrogen fertilizers. We can’t make it anymore, and if it continues, soon there will be no more farms in Haute-Garonne, ”laments this garlic and shallot producer.
If farmers got more income from their farms, “they could diversify and rejuvenate them. And thus create transformation tools allowing them to supply the city of Toulouse”, says Nicolas Ates.
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