Macron: ‘We’ll stop foreigners buying up our farming land’

EMMANUEL MACRON has promised farmers that he will stop foreign investors buying land in France, after a Chinese fund purchased swathes of rich agricultural land in the country.

The promise came as the president hosted a lunch for 1,000 young farmers at the Élysée Palace, an event seen by critics as an attempt to buy their goodwill ahead of the annual Paris farm show, where he is due to make the traditional presidential visit tomorrow.

“For me, French agricultural lands are strategic investments upon which our sovereignty depends, so we can’t allow hundreds of hectares of land to be bought by foreign powers without us knowing the aims of these purchases,” Mr Macron told the farmers. “We will very obviously put in place regulatory safeguards and will work with you… to put an end to what happened,” he said.

The purchase of 2,700 hectares of prime farmland by a Chinese investor in the cereal-growing Allier and Indre regions over the past two years provoked an outcry among French farmers. The rural association Safar called on the government to put an end to the increase in financial investors, rather than farmers, buying land.

Mr Macron also spoke to the young farmers about the EU’S negotiations with the Mercosur bloc of South American countries over a wide-ranging trade agreement, in which agriculture is proving a major stumbling block.

French farmers oppose extra agricultural imports from South America, which they say are produced with lower standards than in Europe.

“There will never be hormone [-injected] beef in France,” the president said. “There will be no reduction in our quality, social, environmental or sanitary standards in these negotiations.”