New protests hit France’s farm show
PARIS: French farmers dumped flour over the stand of a leading meat producer at the country’s annual farm show yesterday, a day after they heckled President Francois Hollande as he arrived at the event. The farmers’ anger has boiled over after months of protests over a crisis in the agricultural sector sparked by collapsing beef, pork and milk sales and augmented by a price war with wholesalers. The upset, which has seen farmers leave their fields and animals to block roads with their tractors and dump manure outside government offices, has also cast a pall on the country’s biggest celebration of its agricultural wealth. On Saturday, farmers tore down the agriculture ministry’s pavilion, resulting in the arrest of five members of the main farmers’ union FNSEA.
And despite calls for calm, the protests continued when a group of farmers attacked a stand owned by one of France’s biggest agri-businesses. The farmers blasted the stand of the meat brand Charal with fire extinguishers before dumping about 30 kilograms (70 pounds) of flour on it.
Charal is owned by the agribusiness giant Bigard, which has a turnover of 4.3 billion euros ($4.7 billion) and a payroll of 14,000. Last year during negotiations with farmers the group refused to fix a minimum buying price.
“For every hundred euros it gets (for its meat), Bigard pays only eight to the producer,” one of the farmers said, while handing out fake 100 euro notes. “Our job has a cost.”
“When you pay between 17 and 20 euros per kilo ($8.5 and $9 per pound) for meat, you should know that we are only getting two and a half to three euros,” said Pierre Vaugarny, secretary general of the National Bovine Federation, using a handheld loudspeaker.
In a statement Charal said it “understands the farmers’ difficulties, which are related to structural and short-term problems that can only be solved in a collective manner.” A nine-day event held in vast exhibition grounds in southwestern Paris, the farm show is one of the most popular dates in the capital’s calendar, with an expected turnout of 700,000 people this year.