Serge Bousquet-Cassagne likes prunes. Already because he produces it on his farm of around a hundred hectares in Flumel, a town located around fifty kilometers from Agen, in Lot-et-Garonne. Also, because the leader of the agricultural union Rural coordination 47 distributes in bursts. “ [Sans annonce du gouvernement]we will take more divisive and more severe actions,” he warned Tuesday at the microphone of BFM TV on a blocking point. A promise kept this Wednesday with in particular a proper spreading of slurry on the prefecture and repeated this Thursday with the suspension before the labor inspectorate of a wild boar which was then disemboweled.
An action which has the merit of the continuity of its thought. Already in 2001, the farmer, now 64 years old, had occupied the Agen prefecture with his union, recalls The diplomatic world, with the slogan: “We want Poles and Moroccans!” » “People who are hungry and who want to work,” Serge Bousquet-Cassagne then explained.
In the angry movement of farmers, Serge Bousquet-Cassagne appears as a strong man and has placed Agen at the spearhead of the protest in a department where the Rural Coordination (CR) won the last elections of the chambers of agriculture with 60% of the votes, well ahead of the all-powerful FNSEA, from which Rural Coordination emerged with a split completed in 1991.
Since 2013, the prune and corn producer has taken the helm of the Lot-et-Garonne departmental chamber of agriculture. A management that the Court of Auditors scrutinized on January 19 with the publication of a 70-page report on the period 2015-2023, listing numerous irregularities: lack of ethics, defects in calls for tenders, refusal to application of regulatory measures on animal welfare or the use of phytosanitary products, details The world.
Power blow to Sivens
Largesse with the law which links the course of Serge Bousquet-Cassagne. The trade unionist and farmers accumulates eighteen trials in thirty years. Latest conviction to date, a ten-month prison sentence with a probationary suspension of eighteen months pronounced on appeal and erasing the nine-month sentence decided at first instance in the “Lac de Caussade” case, broad restraint of water dug without authorization. Megabasins that the farmer has always defended. Already in Sivens, in Tarn in 2014, the farmer had sent members of his union to oppose the Zadists who were fighting against a project to build an artificial lake, resituates Reporterre.
War on the administration, freedom to undertake without constraint or control and muscular actions are the DNA of its union. “ [La CR] intends to defend the autonomy of farmers, “free and responsible entrepreneurs”, criticizes the misdirection of certain cooperatives […] and calls for the restoration of community preference. Liberal below the borders and protectionist beyond, in a way. Its catch-all ideology is rather populist,” analyzed agricultural researcher Serge Cordelier in comments reported by Release.
From there to making it a movement that would be close ideologically and politically to the RN, it is only a step that Etienne, Bousquet-Cassagne’s son, candidate for Marine Le Pen’s party in the partial legislative elections of 2013, has crossed. “Like all French people, I share 80% of the FN’s ideas. And, of course, I support my son, because he is my son. But I don’t belong to the FN. », replied the president of the CR to Libé.
Thus, while one of the most powerful social movements in the agricultural world is currently taking place, Serge Bousquet-Cassagne is ready for what he calls “his last fight. There won’t be any more after that. We will be killed by Europe and Paris and all these standards which are massacring us,” he concluded on BFM TV. And coming from the man who was nicknamed in his youth by his rugby teammates “Serge Bousquet-Castagne”, we can take him at his word.