Among the Members of the European Parliament are a group of farmers and others with agricultural interests who benefit directly from the subsidies provided for in the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The fact that many of them are at the forefront of negotiations to map out the reform of the CAP, to be put to a vote during this week, raises a clear question of conflicts of interest. Amélie Poinssot reports.
Farmers in south-west France angry at parliament's approval of the ‘CETA’ EU-Canada trade deal, which they claim will threaten their livelihoods by allowing the importation of agricultural products that do not meet current EU standards, have attacked the offices of MPs from President Emmanuel Macron’s LREM party by bricking up one and dumping manure outside another.
French agriculture minister Didier Guillaume said a state of 'natural disaster' would be declared to help insurance relief for French farmers, notably in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alps region of central and south-east France where violent storms, including hailfalls, ravaged fruit crops.
Police used tear gas to disperse farmers protesting about the loss of rights for agricultural land who blocked the Tour de France stage on Tuesday with bales of hay and sheep, but the spread of the gas vapours meant several riders needed medical treatment from the doctor’s car at the rear of the peloton.
President Emmanuel Macron was greeted with jeers by a section of farmers attending the major yearly agricultural showground in Paris, engaging with hecklers who protested notably against diminishing revenues and a future ban on the use of the herbicides containing the compound glyphosate.
A recently-released film 'Normandie nue' or 'Naked Normandy' uses comedy to depict the crisis facing the world of farming in France. The movie, which stars 'The Intouchables' actor François Cluzet, features real farmers from a village in northern France who agree to strip naked for the film. But behind the film's slapstick moments the crisis and hardship are real enough. Caroline Trouillet met some of the farmers involved.
The most recent available statistics, made public in 2016 by France’s public health institute, show that 985 farmers killed themselves from 2007 to 2011, a suicide rate 22 percent higher than that of the general population and to a backdrop of increasing economic hardship among rural populations, while the real numbers are feared to be greater still because of suicides not officially declared by doctors.
