A convoy of tractors and cars of more than 3 km left this Tuesday morning at 5 a.m. from Limoges. At 6:30 a.m., he was stuck on the A20, around twenty km north of Limoges. The farmers set out on Monday morning from Lot-et-Garonne from Marmande, Agen, or even La Réole and headed back towards the capital, to make their demands heard, after a week of protests at the local level. They are targeting Paris, the Rungis market and international airports. In Bergerac, then Périgueux, the convoy, organized by Rural Coordination, grew this Monday. Others joined the road in Limoges. Two journalists from France Bleu, Marc Bertrand and Thibault Delmarle, are at the heart of the convoy. Follow his progress this Tuesday.
The essential
- The convoy left Lot-et-Garonne this Monday morning, from Limoges this Tuesday
- He was blocked around 6:30 a.m. on the A20 north of Limoges by a gendarmerie roadblock
- At 6 a.m., it consisted of 150 tractors
- Destination: the Paris region, to join hundreds of other farmers in Rungis
Listen to the reporters’ points every quarter of an hour
loading
A little before 6:30 a.m., the convoy found itself blocked at Bessine-sur-Gartempes, around twenty kilometers north of Limoges. Gendarmerie armored vehicles completely blocked the passage on the A20. The farmers are outraged, according to our two reporters on site. Some tractors break down highway barriers “to keep moving forward.” They are not ready to turn around.
“We will be at Rungis this evening”
This Tuesday, the convoy left Limoges in the early morning. It was still dark, after a military alarm at 4:30 a.m. “All the tractors left with full headlights”, on the A20, driving at 40 km/h on the right lane, escorted by police motorcycles, said Marc Bertrand and Thibault Delmarle around 6:30 a.m. They spent the night in the parking lot of the Limoges Chamber of Agriculture, “a kind of cattle truck with mattresses inside”. “They promise us that we will be at Rungis this evening,” said Marc Bertrand again, a little doubtful.
Driving to Limoges on Monday
A little after 8 p.m., the convoy was preparing to enter Limoges, where the convoy was to spend the night.
A little before 7 p.m., the hundred tractors crossed La Coquille. At 6 p.m., the convoy arrived in Thiviers, on the A21. In the walkie-talkies present in each tractor, the farmers were preparing to take the A20 towards Limoges. Will the authorities let them do this? Marc Bertrand says that some people want to ride all night. Others want to stop at an undisclosed location to rest.
Marc Bertrand
“People are all giving us thumbs up.”
At 5:30 p.m., Marc Bertrand took advantage of a break, at the entrance to the town of Sorges, on the RN21, imposed to wait for the convoy’s latecomers, to interview Rémi, a poultry breeder. The farmer is one of around thirty tractors which joined the convoy in Périgueux. His machine reaches 39.7 km/h. “People all give us thumbs up, they applaud us, honk at us. A convoy of 100 tractors, going up to Paris, like that, is unheard of. We’ll do it just once in our lives, I hope , because it’s exhausting and demoralizing.”
Around 4:30 p.m., the tractors arrived in Périgueux. Around 100 tractors, and between 30 and 40 cars following each other at 30 km/h, forming a convoy more than 2 km long. They tried to take the A89 motorway, at the Pont du Cerf roundabout, but faced with the refusal of the prefecture, left the expressway at the next exit, to reach Périgueux.
A convoy leaving Agen which grows in Bergerac
The convoy, which left Lot-et-Garonne, made a first stop in Bergerac at midday to pick up new demonstrators.