Anger of farmers: towards a day with cork flavor on the roads of Gard Thursday January 25

À l'entrée de l'autoroute A9, à Roquemaure, les accès bloqués ont provoqué ce mercredi les premiers bouchons gardois liés au mouvement des agriculteurs. MIKAËL ANISSET

Le département du Gard risque fort d'être le théâtre ce jeudi 25 janvier de la plus grosse manifestation agricole depuis très longtemps avec le blocage annoncé de l'autoroute A9 à Nîmes.

The anger of farmers, who can no longer stand standards and want to make a decent living from their profession, is not waning in Occitanie and more precisely in Gard. The department will be the scene this Thursday, January 25, of the blocking of the A9 motorway, near the Nîmes west interchange, from early in the morning, before 8 a.m. By the time the ten convoys of vehicles, including numerous tractors, from all over the department, arrived in Nîmes.

David Sève, president of the FDSEA du Gard, expects a large mobilization, "the largest demonstration of farmers ever known in our department with at least 500 people, ten convoys. There has been real frustration for at least a year, when we carried out our first somewhat tough action. But there, with inflation, it’s even more complicated! I really have the feeling that the South is going to catch fire, especially since the government tells us that it hears us and behind it announces an increase of the price of electricity by 10%."

Rallying Points

For the demonstration, ten rallying points were given to farmers near La Calmette, but also in Générac, Aigues-Vives, Bellegarde, Bagnols-sur-Cèze, &nbsp ;Montfrin, Remoulins, Quissac, Sommières, as well as at the Gard Chamber of Agriculture in Nîmes.

The Gard prefecture announces that the secondary network could be impacted. And this will be the case from 7 a.m. whether on the RN 106, the RN 113, Chemin des Canaux, to the east, south and west of Nîmes. The A9 and A54 motorways should be avoided in both directions this Thursday. On all impacted routes, you are asked to avoid the demonstration area, to postpone travel and above all not to travel on routes closed or blocked by demonstrators.

Many demands

In addition, the management of the Tango public transport network in the Nîmes metropolitan area has announced "probable disturbances" this Thursday.

The objective of the demonstrators is to be able to organize themselves in order to hold out as long as possible if necessary, which has required careful preparation for several days, particularly for everything that concerns supplies: "We are here to carry our agricultural demands. But we feel that the government is counting on a rotting of our movement. He's wrong because it's going to last."

The FDSEA, the Young Farmers of Gard, the Chamber of Agriculture of Gard, the cooperative winegrowers and the independent winegrowers will thus be able to reiterate their main demands this Thursday. "We want to clean up the market by limiting production through grubbing up and eliminating excess volume." There is also the desire to protect young farmers, the specificities of the profession and the local market, to obtain cash flow aid and support for innovation.