After a summer spent in the fields, they will, for three days, abandon their farms “to go up to the city”. Every year in mid-September, farmers have a bit of a back-to-school experience in the aisles of Space, the major international livestock show, which opened on Tuesday at the Rennes exhibition center. But for the first time since 1995, no member of the government is expected to visit them this year. “We invited Michel Barnier so that he could send a strong signal to the rural world, which really needs it,” emphasizes Cédric Henry, president of the Departmental Federation of Farmers’ Unions (FDSEA) of Ille-et-Vilaine. But we understand that he has a busy schedule at the moment.”
Farmers would have had things to say to the Prime Minister, well known in the farming world for having been Minister of Agriculture from 2007 to 2009. “But what matters is not what he has done in the past but what he will do in the coming month,” assures Arnaud Rousseau. The head of the powerful FNSEA is therefore waiting like everyone else for the formation of the new government and the appointment of a Minister of Agriculture. Not without a hint of exasperation. “Because the uncertainty is total and there is urgency,” believes the chairman of the board of directors of the Avril group.
“Feeling like you’ve been taken for a ride”
An emergency that the previous government seemed to have heard at the beginning of 2024, when the anger of the countryside had rumbled throughout the country. After several weeks of blockades and tractor parades, Gabriel Attal had unveiled in February a long list of 62 measures to respond to the crisis. It was a question among other things of aid, pesticides, visas for foreign seasonal workers, but also and above all of administrative simplification and food sovereignty with the adoption of an agricultural orientation law.
Seven months later, promises are still being delayed. There has been “some progress”, acknowledges Cédric Henry, such as the removal of the increase in the tax on non-road diesel or the relaxation of the rules on permanent grassland. But for the rest, “the account is not there and farmers feel like they’ve been taken for a ride”, Arnaud Rousseau complains.
Animal disease outbreak raises fears of worst
A dairy farmer in Maure-de-Bretagne (Ille-et-Vilaine), Isabelle was there at the beginning of the year when the agricultural world took to the streets. Since then, her daily life has been punctuated by bureaucratic red tape. “There is still just as much paperwork to fill out and we get another layer of it every year,” she says. “We continue to do it because we do this job out of passion, but you really have to be motivated to be a farmer today.”
To make matters worse, the weather has played tricks with a rainy spring that has ruined the cereal harvests. The same goes for wine-growing lands, where many winegrowers are expecting a “catastrophic” vintage. And what about livestock farmers, powerless in the face of the surge in animal diseases such as epizootic haemorrhagic disease, bluetongue and avian flu, which are causing fears of the worst? “We are desperately waiting for vaccines and in the meantime, we go to see our animals every morning with butterflies in their stomachs, hoping that they are not sick,” says Natacha Guillemet, a breeder of Parthenais cows in Vendée and a member of the Rural Coordination.
“The cocktail is explosive”
In this context, it is therefore not time to celebrate in the aisles of Space. “I am not far from retirement so the hardest part is behind me, but I see a lot of depressed colleagues who want to stop everything”, says Gilles, a breeder in Granville. On the farms, the anger is therefore far from being extinguished. And in the absence of responses from the State, “the cocktail is explosive”, warns Arnaud Rousseau, warning the future government.
“We’re going to let the harvest time go by for a month or two,” continues Cédric Henry. “But if nothing changes, we’re definitely going to get the tractors out again. It’s only when things are rumbling that we get things done.” Not yet appointed, the future Minister of Agriculture is therefore likely to have a busy start to the new school year.