“Measures that stack up against us” : perched on their tractor, hundreds of farmers flocked this Wednesday, February 8 to Paris to demonstrate against the restrictions on the use of pesticides and other obligations, a first for three years. A long line of machines moved around 9 a.m. from Porte de Versailles, where many police officers were deployed to supervise the demonstration which is heading towards the Invalides, in the center.
Around 9:30 a.m., the cumulative traffic jam was 304 kilometers in Ile-de-France, a figure “exceptional for this hour” after a peak at nearly 425 km, according to the Sytadin site.
Trigger of the mobilization: the decision of the government on January 23 to give up authorizing neonicotinoid insecticides for the cultivation of sugar beet, following a decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union.
READ ALSO > 5 questions about neonicotinoids, pesticides “bee killers”
In recent months, farmers have also gathered in small groups, here to denounce the rise in their production costs due to soaring energy prices, there to demand storage of irrigation water.
Their last big mobilization dated back to November 27, 2019, when a thousand tractors carried out snail operations on the device. The demonstrators denounced a tightening of the rules concerning the spreading of synthetic pesticides.
“Traffic very badly disrupted”
“Traffic, which has been severely disrupted in a large area, from the ring road to the seventh and fifteenth arrondissements of Paris, will be gradually restored” during the day, warned The police headquarterswhile this Wednesday is also a strike day at the SNCF.
Grégoire Bouillant, a 40-year-old grain farmer, left his farm in Val-d’Oise around 5 a.m. to arrive, at 20 km / h, at Porte de Versailles, where the Salon will be held in less than a month. agriculture international. He denounces a “environmentalist pressure” and “measures that keep stacking up against us”. At the back of his tractor, a sign “Macron liar, yes to NNI (neonicotinoids, editor’s note), yes to French sugar”.
Three years later, Emmanuel Macron is no longer really “champion of the Earth”
“We want to show the government that we cannot ban means of production without an alternative”adds Cyril Milard, president of the FDSEA 77.
FNSEA and Young Farmers flags and posters “my job respects nature, stop abusive ecologies” bloomed on the windows of the tractors and many passers-by took photos along the route of the demonstration.
Neonicotinoids, toxic to bees and banned since 2018, had benefited from an exemption for two years. This made it possible to apply them preventively on beet seeds to protect them from jaundice. “As a user of neonicotinoids, I don’t feel like I’m poisoning the world”, annoys the farmer and union activist Damien Greffin. He chairs the FNSEA section of the Parisian Grand Bassin which brings together 12 cereal departments in the north of France and is at the initiative of the event, with the union of beet growers CGB, affiliated to the FNSEA. The National Federation of the majority agricultural union followed suit by calling “to mobilize from February 8 in Paris and until February 20 throughout France”.
“At this rate agriculture will disappear”
For Damien Greffin, “at this rate agriculture will disappear”. He cites the ban on the insecticide phosmet which “compromises” the cultivation of cherries, or that – next – of a weedkiller for endives. More broadly, according to the FNSEA, “Farmers today find themselves faced with health and regulatory constraints of all kinds that hinder innovative projects in the territories (irrigation, livestock buildings, etc.)”.
Chemical pollution, climate… What is the “5th planetary limit” crossed by humanity?
The second representative union, the Rural Coordination, claimed to have proposed to the FNSEA to join the demonstration and was refused. The Confédération paysanne, the third union which mobilized on Tuesday against the pension reform, deplored that “others” demonstrate “to continue to use neonicotinoids and refuse any ecological progress”.
The environmental NGO Future generations recalled on Wednesday that neonicotinoids were “more toxic than the infamous DDT”banned in the 1970s, denouncing practices “fit for 1960s agriculture, not 2020s”.
