Paris, the city of light, will transform Thursday into the city of ... um ... tractors, reports The Washington Post.
It's not exactly the image the French government wants to show the world, including the thousands of tourists enjoying the end of the Parisian summer. But unless the government decides to erect a blockade around the city, the tractors will flood the boulevards of Paris.
For months now, French farmers have been protesting declining food prices and cheap imports while demanding assistance from the government. Now, they are bringing their grievances to the French capital. They have even adopted a Twitter hashtag: #1000tracteursetmoi.
Hundreds of tractors were on the move Wednesday, streaming toward Paris from every direction.
It has been a summer of discontent for French farmers.
With their tractors, they have blockaded roads from Spain and Germany, stopping hundreds of trucks hauling cheaper vegetables, meat and milk from other European nations.
Farmers have carried banners reading "We want to make a living from our work" — and some have even stormed into supermarkets and plucked cheap imported food off the shelves.
In late July, an official with France's primary farmers union proudly told the Agence France-Presse news agency that its members had turned back a truck carrying cheese. "Consumers think this is French, but the cheese comes from Slovakia," Franck Sander told AFP.