Toulouse. Farmers’ demonstration on Friday: “We will block the city next week if we are not listened to”
By David Saint-Sernin
Published on
Their energy bills are skyrocketing, fuel is on the rise and buying fertilizer is costing them much more than last year: despite the rise in the price of wheat, farmers of Upper Garonne have the knife under their throat and now (a lot) between their teeth.
Friday, they land in Toulouse
Friday January 6, 2023, a hundred of them authorized to converge on Toulouse in trucks and cars to express their anger to the authorities. The ground will shake and manure will be spread. An image that we had not seen in downtown Toulouse since April 2021.
From the whole department
On Friday, assembly points are planned in Capens, Villefranche de Lauragais, Pinsaguel and Aussonne at 8:30 a.m. The various convoys will then meet at 9:30 a.m. in front of the Cité administrative, in the Compans-Caffarelli district, in Toulouse to defend “viable and economically viable agriculture”.
“First warning shot”
This first movement, at the call of the FDSEA 31, “is a first warning shot”, explains to Toulouse news the departmental president of the union, Jean-François Lamassé.
“Today, on average, a farmer in the department earns 332 euros per month. We have nothing more to lose and if we are not heard, we will block Toulouse from next week. It does not please us, because going down with our machines in Toulouse costs us money, but these people only understand that”.
An administrative decision
” These people “it is the administration and more particularly the DRAAF (Regional Directorate for Food, Agriculture and Forestry, editor’s note), which has excluded, according to them, “many cereal-growing areas in Occitania, and as a result many farmers, from the intermediate zone, a decision that goes against the commitments made by the Ministry of Agriculture for the development of the cereal sector”, roars the FDSEA 31.
Less intermediate zone, less subsidies
To make it clear, for the administration, the intermediate zone is “an area in which agricultural yields are at the same level as other production areas with more favorable climatic conditions, particularly in field crops”.
Jean-Francois Lamasse explains the contours of the discord:
“It’s an area where farms don’t produce high yields, but high quality. Farms that are part of these zones receive additional subsidies from Europe. In Occitania, compared to what we had been presented, it is 2/3 of the area that has been removed. This is as much money that farmers will not receive in the unfavorable situation that we are experiencing. This is unacceptable “.
A message that they will pass without hesitation on Friday in Toulouse.
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