Farmer father’s suicide turns son into activist
Toulouse – Inspired to act following the suicide of his father amid the tough conditions of the French farming industry, Jerome Bayle has personified the French farmers campaign to protest pay, regulation and taxes by blocking roads nationwide.
The roadblock he started with a few others near the town of Carbonne, outside Toulouse, was the first in a movement that by Monday had spread to major roads leading into Paris.
Bayle insists he never wanted to be a “superhero”. But he now finds himself under attack for contenting himself with the first government concessions.
Bayle has evoked the deeply personal shock of his farmer father’s suicide as a foundation for his activism in regular appearances on news channels.
But “the name of the game isn’t getting my name in lights, the name of the game is making sure we can live from our profession”, said the 42-year-old cattle farmer from southwest France.
Bayle started out training to be a stonemason, but took over the herd of 90 cattle following his father’s suicide.
“I found my father with a bullet in his head because of this profession,” he said.
“He couldn’t go on any more, he wasn’t working properly, he was letting himself go, even though he had been a very good livestock farmer,” he recalled.
Bayle’s friend farmer Joel Tournier, who joined the Carbonne roadblock, said: “Jerome
is a leader, everyone gets behind him. He doesn’t cheat, he’s uncompromising, honest and passionate about his profession, he puts 100% into everything,” Tournier added.
Bayle’s 75-year-old mother, who ran the farm while he was manning the barricade, told local paper La Depeche du Midi her son is “a go-getter, who speaks as he finds and has the courage of his convictions. He’s fighting for
farmers’ survival. He’ll keep going to the end,” she added.
Bayle met Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Friday, when the government chief came to the southwest to announce initial concessions. He was also granted a private one-on-one meeting with Attal.
But some have taken issue with his declaration that farmers had “won” three key concessions from government: the
dropping of an agricultural fuel tax increase as well as aid for irrigation and compensation for a recent wave of epidemic disease.
“What was said tonight won’t calm the anger, more is needed,” Arnaud Rousseau, head of the powerful FNSEA farmers’ union, said on Friday.
“The aim was to sound the call to revolt... I didn’t want to be the superhero of French agriculture,” Bayle said. –