Protesting farmers shut down long stretches of some of France’s major highways again on Friday, using tractors to block and slow traffic and squeeze the government ever more tightly to give in to their demands that growing and rearing food be made easier and more lucrative.
The farmers’ spreading movement for better remuneration for their produce, less red tape and lower costs, as well as protection against cheap imports is increasingly becoming a major crisis for the government.
It echoes the 2018-2019 yellow vest demonstrations against economic injustice that rocked the first term of President Emmanuel Macron and lastingly dented his popularity.
This time, Mr Macron’s new prime minister, Gabriel Attal, his mettle being sorely tested just two weeks into the job, is hoping to assuage and win over demonstrating farmers with a series of measures he announced during a visit to a cattle farm in southern France on Friday afternoon.
They include “drastically simplifying” certain technical procedures “starting today.” Some of the measures will reduce 14 rules to one, Attal said.
In another move to placate farmers, he announced the progressive end to diesel fuel taxes for farm vehicles.
The prime minister, wearing a suit and tie and reading from notes that rested on a bale of hay, said the government has decided “to put agriculture above all”, words he repeated numerous times.
In an apparent nod to the far right, he said the “marching order” is “to protect our heritage and identity” because French agriculture defines “who we are”.
“We have to open a new chapter, change the mentality … firstly that of the state,” he said, before heading to one of the first farmers’ blockades for a first-hand encounter with the anger.
Ranged against the government has been the well-organised and media-savvy movement by determined farmers.
Using their tractors and sometimes hay bales as barriers, they have been blocking and slowing traffic on major roads.
They have also dumped stinky agricultural waste at the gates of government offices.
Highway operator Vinci Autoroutes said two highways that are usually busy thoroughfares for road traffic through southern France and into Spain, the A7 and A9, were closed on Friday morning by farmers’ blockades for long stretches totalling nearly 250 miles.
Blockades also severed more than a dozen other highways, Vinci said. Tractors also blocked some major roads leading toward Paris.
Farmer Nicolas Gallepin, who took part in a demonstration in his tractor at a roundabout south of Paris this week, said thickets of regulations that govern how food can be produced are swallowing up chunks of his time and that fuel costs are eating into his bottom line.
“We’ve seen, in the last 10 years, one good year in 2022, but that’s it. We’ve not been paid what we deserve in 10 years,” he said.
“What really hurts us is competing imports from other countries that don’t comply with the same regulations.”
The yellow vest protests held France in their grip for months, starting among provincial workers camped out at traffic circles to protest fuel taxes and subsequently snowballing into a nationwide challenge to Macron’s government.
