“Anger of the farmers”: in Pont-Saint-Esprit, we are blocking, and we are mainly blaming European competition

Depuis le rond-point où manifestent les agriculteurs en colère, la file de poids lourds du nouveau Pont est visible jusqu’à loin. Midi Libre – Geoffrey Gavalda

En colère mais surtout solidaires, les agriculteurs du Gard étaient réunis aussi autour de Pont-Saint-Esprit pour instaurer des barrages filtrant de Saint-Nazaire jusqu'à Bollène le 25 janvier.

"To save a crow's nest on a tree we prefer to kill a peasant", deplores Philippe. Around him, around fifty wine growers, arborists and breeders occupied the roundabout of the new Pont-Saint-Esprit bridge, on the Gard side on the morning of January 25. While behind them a queue of heavy goods vehicles stretches as far as the eye can see on the new bridge, they regret that some of the rules supposed to preserve the future seem to be stifling the present.

"No country without peasants", "our end = your hunger", we read on some signs. Midi Libre – Geoffrey Gavalda

Unfair competition

Philippe, in fact, sixty years old and cheerfully good-natured, is a kiwi farmer between Pont and Saint-Alexandre. He who considers himself "small" struggles to sell his kiwis, overtaken by unfair competition coming "supposedly" from Greece, even in the market halls of Pont. "These are disgusting products, full of hormones, we wouldn't even pick them up on the floor at home", continues the operator, calm and smiling despite everything.

Philippe Jullien, a kiwi farmer in difficulty, has lost none of his good nature. Midi Libre – Geoffrey Gavalda

Christelle, shepherdess of a flock of a hundred sheep, toils all year round to finally have to live on RSA. She has seen, she says, Romanian breeders massively defrauding the traceability of their animals which she herself must "identify even when the loop is bigger than the one. #39;ear of lambs". Cédric, for his part, only received 20% help to finance the 40,000 € that the installation of nets for his cherries would require against insects and birds. Spain and Turkey are beating him up, he says.

A way to invite yourself to the table

Many others have similar stories to report, some because of fruit flies, some because of their untrimmed hedges. But always the bottom line problem actually seems to have its source in cheaper production, not subject to the same environmental requirements: "we only ask to be able to live from our work", summarizes Damien Gilles, president of the Côtes-Du-Rhône union.

There were up to sixty of them on this roundabout alone on the morning of January 25. DR – Pauline Pradier

So if some of their demands may seem out of step with ecological requirements, "it's above all a means of ;demand that we be allowed to sit at the decision-making table, reassures Damien Gilles.

The blocked in solidarity

In the line of vehicles at the front At the stop, Abdel, a truck driver who came from Nîmes this morning, is stuck. for an hour and a half. Despite everything he supports "without reservation" the farmers whose demands he understands. Like most of the people interviewed nearby.

Sometimes, it is at the heart of the same motorhome that opinions differ: "too p&eacute ;nalizing" for Audrey, 4 months pregnant and on the road to vacation with her husband Guy. He unconditionally supports the movement, but both agree that the situation of French farmers is untenable.

They will finally be able to cross a few minutes later, the last towards Anduze, the first towards Ain.

Abdel is transporting a load for a large distribution company towards Ain. Midi Libre – Geoffrey Gavalda

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