They are almost there. The convoy of farmers who left the South West at the call of the Rural Coordination to “invest” the wholesale market of Rungis (Val-de-Marne) stopped Tuesday evening in a field in Loir-et-Cher to pass at night, noted an AFP journalist.
It is on the land of a farmer sympathetic to the movement, in Pierrefitte-sur-Sauldre, between Vierzon and Orléans, 170 km from Rungis, that the convoy of 200 to 300 tractors arrived shortly before 10 p.m. “Welcome to Sologne, we are united, we have the same problems as you,” the owner of the place told them.
After leaving the A20 motorway, the convoy traveled along small roads for several hours, closely supervised by the police. The gendarmes tried twice to stop their progress but they got around them, they explained.
Support from residents
In the villages crossed, many residents came out to greet them and applaud their passage, sometimes brandishing French flags, noted an AFP journalist. The demonstrators, mobilized at the call of the Lot-et-Garonne Rural Coordination, were only around thirty when they left Agen on Monday morning.
Joined on their journey by farmers from the areas they crossed, there were 400 to 500 of them on Tuesday evening, according to Serge Bousquet-Cassagne, the president of the Lot-et-Garonne chamber of agriculture who joined them in Loir-et-Cher .
” I am very proud of you ! You are going to lead this fight because if we do not lead this fight, we are dead,” he told the demonstrators. “Tomorrow, we will have to be serious and disciplined,” he insisted, haranguing his troops.
“There will be surprises”
The farmers must return to the road on Wednesday towards the national interest market (MIN) of Rungis, the food hub of the entire Ile-de-France and symbolic target of their protest movement.
“Tomorrow, there will be surprises, we are completely motivated: we will not come back down without going to Rungis in one way or another,” assured Serge Bousquet-Cassagne.
They planned to arrive “during the day” at Rungis, despite the measures deployed by the police to keep them at bay, including armored vehicles around the MIN.
“I have the impression that there are double standards, the FNSEA (majority union) can go to Paris and we are blocked. Here again, what contempt for farmers to deploy armored vehicles and gendarmes to stop us when we have always been transparent about the route taken and our intentions,” declared Karine Duc, co-president of the Lot-et Rural Coordination -Garonne.