One week after French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal was appointed on January 9th he faced his first major political crisis with the eruption of a protest movement by farmers in south-west France which soon snowballed into a nationwide revolt.
The long-simmering malaise in the profession, principally caused by dwindling income, rising costs and widespread indebtedness, spilled over into sometimes violent action. There were attacks on administrative buildings, road blocks were set up around the country, convoys of tractors threatened a siege of Paris and the nearby Rungis food market, the largest in Europe, and farmers wrestled with police in clashes at the major agricultural fair, the Salon de l’Agriculture, held in the capital in February.
Among the farmers’ demands, many of which continue to be subject to ongoing negotiations with the government, is an increase in what food processors (who transform raw produce) and retailers pay for their produce, a curb on cheap food imports, an end to a planned tax hike on fuel, a simplification of the red tape in administrative requirements, and – sitting high on the list of grievances – a loosening of environmental protection regulations that apply to their use of land and pesticides.
With opinion surveys showing large public support for the farmers, and with European Parliament elections due in June, when President Emmanuel Macron’s centre-right Renaissance party faces a stern test, notably in face of the far-right, which hooked onto the farmers’ revolt, the government has already agreed a raft of concessions.
These include the withdrawal of the tax increase on fuel used by agricultural vehicles, closer monitoring to ensure retailers comply with an existing law supposed to ensure retailers and processors pay fair prices to farmers for their produce, and the controversial suspension of the so-called Ecophyto programme, which has the aim of reducing by half the current use of pesticides in French agriculture by 2030 – a move that outraged environmentalist groups.
The dominant FNSEA farmers union, whose positions include promoting the interests of intensive farming and the use of chemical pesticides, made the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB) a principal target of the protests. The OFB, which operates under the auspices of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, is an administration which enforces environmental regulations, with regional offices nationwide. Its inspectors, whose wide brief includes ensuring the compliance of agricultural activities with environmental laws, but also hunting activity and national parks, have police powers.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
On January 30th, as the protests gathered pace, a convoy of tractors arrived at the OFB office in Pin-au-Haras, in Normandy. In an operation led by the FNSEA and its ally, the Jeunes Agriculteurs (JA) union, a group of around 30 farmers proceeded to completely wrap the building, top to bottom, in plastic sheeting. That same day, piles of manure were dumped outside the OFB office in Dijon, southern Burgundy.
Amid the anger targeting the OFB, the head of one of its regional administrations ((whose identity is withheld here) sent out an email to his staff at the end of January which read: “Until further notice, we are asked to suspend checks on farms.” The decision was apparently taken in concertation with the prefecture, the local representation of state administration.
In its role as an environmental policing force, the OFB has two distinct missions. One involves administrative checks, which are carried out under the supervision of the local prefect (head of the prefecture). These consist of ensuring compliance with orders issued by the local prefectures, such as the limits placed on the amount of water that can be used for irrigation. The other involves judicial police missions carried out on the ground under the authority of the public prosecution services, whereby OFB inspectors ensure compliance with environmental protection laws.
In a list of demands submitted to the government in January, the FNSEA called for the activities of the OFB to be placed “under the authority of prefects” and for the “disarming” of its inspectors whose missions to enforce environmental regulations should be made in a spirit of “education”.
The government responded by announcing that the terms under which the OFB inspectors could operate on agricultural land were to be subject to a review, and also that the operations of the OFB were to be placed under the supervision of local prefects (which was in fact already partly the case).
Since February, following the early concessions by the government, the demonstrations and protests actions have largely subsided, except for sporadic incidents. Meanwhile, in many départements, the environmental controls of the OFB have been suspended. “The services in charge of environmental policing have been asked orally to stop carrying out controls while awaiting further instructions,” said one OFB source, whose name is withheld, in southern France.
The head of an OFB office in north-west France, also speaking on condition his name is withheld, said that its controls on the ground had been broadly “limited”, while administrative controls had been “suspended” even if, he said, “the OFB was less targeted in [the regions of] Brittany and the Pays de la Loire than elsewhere”. He said the OFB staff had been asked to “postpone interviews in judicial investigations concerning farmers” and this with the agreement of the public prosecution services.
“If the use of water is no longer controlled, what will happen?” asked Véronique Caraco-Giordano, secretary general of the SNE-FSU union, which represents staff working in public agencies involved in environmental affairs, referring to situations like that in the south-west Pyrénées-Orientales département, where farming is a major activity, and which suffers from a dire and enduring shortage of water supply.
We felt this tension with the agricultural world coming, since one or two years ago.
Questioned by Mediapart, the OFB provided a written statement minimising the concerns of staff unions by insisting that its operations have not been suspended across the country. “There has been no national order on this subject,” it said. “The situation is variable across the country. It should be noted that at this period, January to mid-March, the OFB services have quite little exclusively agricultural activity to control.”
In the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, which stretches across central France and part of the south-east, a local OFB official in charge of the environment police said that there had been no particular instructions handed down since the farmers’ protests began. “We are in a region where the agricultural sector is not really very significant,” commented the official, who like other OFB staff asked for his name to be withheld. But he voiced concern about the friction that exists with farmers. “It’s more latent [here], but we felt this tension with the agricultural world coming, since one or two years ago,” he said.
In a response to questions from the agricultural news weekly La France agricole, the OFB issued a statement detailing that in 2023, out of a total of around 50,000 inspections it carried out, just 2,759 concerned agricultural premises. It added that those checks on farmland were down in number on both 2021 (3,971) and 2022 (4,230). Importantly, most of the inspections found no offence to report.
Out of the total inspections carried out last year, the OFB told La France agricole, close to 40% concerned water quality and use of phytosanitary products, and 30% concerned the condition of water resources. Close to 20% involved controls on the preservation of aquatic environments, and notably wetlands, and almost 10% involved checks on the conditions of protected species whose numbers, it said, show a concerning decrease and notably in agricultural environments.
OFB told to negotiate a covenant with chambers of agriculture
Among the measures announced by the government in an attempt to defuse the protests earlier this year was the setting up of negotiations between the OFB and the National Union of Chambers of Agriculture to reach a binding pact concerning the practical and procedural nature of the OFB’s inspections.
The chambers of agriculture are a nationwide network which represent the many different actors of the agricultural sector, mostly by département, and which promote, assist and to a degree regulate, local agricultural activities. The chambers’ officials are an elected body, and on most of these, the FNSEA and its ally, the Jeunes Agriculteurs union, among the most militant during the recent protests, have a majority of representatives.
The negotiations for the pact began on February 1st, and were initially due to be completed three weeks later. On March 15th, the prime minister’s office announced that the two sides had validated a common agreement, which was to be a new “framework for the methods of controls by the agents of the OFB”. That was immediately and vehemently denied by Sébastien Windsor, president of the National Union of Chambers of Agriculture, in a statement released the same day.
“If the attitude of the OFB exasperates farmers, the attitude of those who want to make us, by force, adopt a covenant is just as exasperating,” he said. “There is no question of studying, and even less of signing, a covenant without having made progress for less oppressive and stressful conditions of controls and, above all, not treating the farmer in a manner similar to that of a delinquent.”
Contacted by Mediapart on several occasions, the National Union of Chambers of Agriculture failed to respond.
In its carefully worded statement to Mediapart, the OFB said of the negotiations: “Exchanges with the agricultural world are ongoing. They cover the reinforcement of good practices, the methods of dialogue (results, irritations, improvements to make), reciprocal training and on the organisation of controls (preparations, communication, education, checks). We wish to pursue this instructive dialogue in [mutual] confidence, without disruption, and so there will be no communication by us at this stage.”
But a draft text for reaching an agreement has been prepared. “It’s biased against the OFB,” commented Benoît Pradal, who represents the Force Ouvrière union within the OFB. “The commitments made by the agricultural chambers are vague, whereas what’s asked of the OFB is very precise.”
We don’t want a third-rate police force, the environment is a serious subject.
Mediapart has obtained access to the draft document. In it, the OFB agrees to advise prefects and the public prosecution services to recognise the “right of error”, meaning an unintentional breach of regulations, which normally does not exist in judicial cases. Elsewhere in the document, it is proposed that prefects are to agree to limit checks on farms to just one in every year.
“There are 400,000 farms in France, and around three thousand controls are carried out [per year],” said Véronique Caraco-Giordano of the SNE-FSU union. “There’s not even one control for each farm.”
Calls to disarm inspectors
One of the principal preoccupations of the OFB’s inspectors is the suggestion from farmers’ unions that they should no longer carry a firearm. While some are not opposed to the introduction of a pause in the checks made on farms, they insist that the disarmament of inspectors is a red line that must not be crossed. This is notably because the OFB is also involved in intervening against poachers, and in controlling hunting activities, where weapons are present. All union officials at the OFB, questioned by Mediapart, said they would take militant action if such a measure was included in the final agreement.
“I don’t see why environmental issues don’t deserve the normal deployment of a policing force,” said Vincent Vauclin, secretary general of CGT-Environnement, a branch of the CGT union representing staff in environmental agencies. “We don’t want a third-rate police force, the environment is a serious subject.”
During Prime Minister Gabriel Attal’s visit to a farm in south-west France on January 26th, when, before a small gathering, he announced measures aimed at defusing the then growing unrest, he spoke in favour of disarming the OFB inspectors. “Is it really necessary to arrive armed when one comes to check on a hedgerow?” he asked. But on March 15th, his entourage insisted that there would be no disarming of the inspectors.
OFB staff complained to Mediapart that the FNSEA union has singled them out as a target for the farmers' anger. “We’ve been thrown to the wolves,” said CGT official Vincent Vauclin. The head of an OFB office in north-west France, cited above and whose name is withheld, commented that the OFB “has been given a very important place in speeches [by farmers’ union officials] whereas there’s no real link with the farmers’ situation”, adding that the OFB had taken a “proper blow” during the revolt.
Véronique Caraco-Giordano said the attacks against the OFB have had a “real impact” on its staff, underlining that “you don’t come to work at the OFB, or even the ministry for ecological transition, by accident”. She added that the attacks will also have “a very important impact” on the ground. “People read the press, so when, for example, one will point out that an installation is not in accordance [with regulations] we’ll obviously be given the response that ‘the prime minister has said that I can do what I want’ […] We do the same as all police forces, we ensure the law is respected,” she said.
“It’s a bit much, because it is the political leaders who now accuse us who vote for these laws,” said the OFB official in charge of the environment police in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, cited further above. “If those in charge want us to stop acting as environment police they must simply tell us.”
-------------------------
- The original French version of this report can be found here.
English version, with some additional reporting, by Graham Tearse