“We want to make efforts for the climate, but without sanctions”: in Bernay, farmers join the national movement
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“We are not criminals,” said the farmers gathered in Bernay on Tuesday evening. While the agricultural world is mobilizing throughout the territory, more than 150 farmers met a stone’s throw from the office of the French Biodiversity Office in the west of the Eure to drop off branches. One of the cars marked “environmental police” and parked in front of the offices was also wrapped with ribbons, as a symbol of the fed up of professionals, who are very upset with the controls carried out on the farms.
“They come to control us armed, with batons and at the slightest branch cut at the wrong time, it is directly the sanction,” laments Margaux, in the first year of an agricultural BTS in Tourville-la-Rivière. The young woman came this Tuesday evening, like many of her comrades, to denounce the forced march and the aberrations of environmental standards “while we do not know if our farms will still exist in the years to come”.
In Eure, it is in particular the controls around hedge cutting periods which are singled out, “while individuals can cut their hedges as they wish”. Like Margaux, many project leaders and young farmers have responded to the call from FDSEA 27 and Young Farmers of Eure.
“What we are asking for,” explains the deputy secretary general of the FNSEA in Eure, Lionel Bois, “is to review certain unsuitable environmental rules, such as the return of fallows when we are asked to produce and The OFB is reviewing the way it carries out its controls. They only know how to sanction, sanction. »
Other farmers are refocusing debate on the Egalim law. “The law is not applied and today, when I sell a ton of potatoes, the supermarkets distribute them at a price 600% higher than ours. It is not normal. » If they defend French agriculture, farmers also denounce the excess of zeal of France which, ahead of certain bans on phytosanitary products, generates a competitive disadvantage compared to neighbors like Germany. “We ban certain products on our sugar beets without banning them in Germany. When we sell them to groups like Saint-Louis, what tells us that these are not German beets that we find on supermarket shelves? », says an operator.
“We are not here to give up”
“Protect the climate of agreement, we want to make efforts, but at our own pace,” also insists the general secretary of the 27, Christophe Gricheux. “To recreate grassland, we need livestock. Today livestock farming is doing badly and if there is no breeding, there are no meadows. » With a delegation of union representatives from the FNSEA of Eure and Young Farmers, he was received by the sub-prefect of Eure Philippe Fournier-Montgieux and the mayor of Bernay Marie-Lyne Vagner.
While the delegation expressed its demands and provided details to local authorities, in the street in front of the sub-prefecture, the demonstrators marked the occasion. “We are not here to block people tonight (Tuesday January 23, 2024), recalled Pierre Lebaillf at the start of the mobilization. “We don’t damage anything, we respect the residents, we only deposit biodegradable waste.” In front of the gates of the Bernay sub-prefecture, straw is first placed before being propelled against the gate using a straw blower, used on farms to distribute the fodder which serves as bedding for the animals. . The few trailers of manure that were waiting quietly along the station were left at the entrances of several large stores.
“The sub-prefect tried to understand why we were so fierce against the OFB, I think he understood,” continues the co-president of the Young Farmers of Eure Denis Phiquepron who thanks his comrades who came in large numbers. “Thank you all, as a representative it warms our hearts. When we see such mobilization, it draws us in and it draws you in too. We are not here to give up and if we do not have what we have demanded and what we are still demanding, we will mobilize again. »
The entire demonstration was marked by the tragedy that occurred in Pamiers in Ariège. In addition to calls for calm, the representatives called on all demonstrators to respect a minute of silence in memory of the 35-year-old farmer and her 12-year-old daughter who died this Tuesday morning at a dam.
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