The French Farming Feud

2,000 french farmers and 400 tractors descended into Pace de Jaude, the city square of Clermont Ferrand, France, on March 25. The farmers were protesting the new Climate and Resilience Bill aimed at taxing the use of nitrogen fertilizer. The farmers described this nitrogen fee as “punitive and unfair” and would “stigmatize” the use of chemical fertilizer without providing any alternatives for the farmers to use (Neal, 2021). The protest was coordinated by the FNSEA, France’s largest farmers’ union (Martin, 2021). 

Tractors rammed down the street signs and lamp posts as the farmers that were tractorless dumped manure into the streets and the sidewalks. It was, needless to say, a pretty messy situation. The protest started at 10 a.m but ended around 5 p.m as French police fired tear gas into the crowd (Neal, 2021). This aggravation within the French farming community against French policies isn’t something new. Farmers in 2019 protested stagnant revenues and unfair competition. During this protest the tractors remained parked on the highway circling Paris and they said they would remain there until French President Emmanuel Macron agreed to meet with protesters (Parker, 2019). Clearly, within the next couple of years not a lot has changed, and the farming community is still very frustrated with their government. 

The union said that the new legislation had ignored the changes the farmers’ had already been making and that the new bill would reduce farmers’ incomes without giving a “real response” to climate issues currently happening in France (Martin, 2021). The potential fertilizer fee paired with the Egalim Law, which has put agriculture produce prices well below production costs, could cause some serious problems with farmers and their families especially in a pandemic (Neal, 2021).

Many make the argument that the Bill is unnecessary due to the fact that the nitrogen balance has decreased tremendously in the last couple of years and that this bill sweeps away all the efforts made by the agricultural profession (Martin, 2021). This is also bad for the economy as a whole because it risks distorting differences in the competitive market already existing between France and other countries (Martin, 2021).

Sources:

https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/french-farmers-take-to-the-streets-of-clermont-ferrand-to-protest-fertiliser-tax/

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/french-farmers-protest-fertilizer-tax/

https://apnews.com/article/7d51bbf297fb4da6bbcb7a13eb0bc12d