EELV MP for Paris Sandrine Rousseau is calling for a “major plan for the transformation of agriculture”. However, she appears to disagree with farmers about the standards imposed on them and the pesticides used.
The anger of the agricultural world is growing. While this Monday already marks the fifth day of blocking actions by farmers in the country, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal will receive the FNSEA this Monday, January 22 at 6 p.m. The president of the agricultural union declared that actions will be carried out “as long as it is necessary”. At the same time, EELV MP Sandrine Rousseau, a figure in the environmental cause, spoke this Monday morning at Sud Radio on the protests of farmers and the deep issues affecting their profession.
For the elected official from Paris, “the subject is not the environment, it is how we reorganize the agricultural sector. We must produce differently, with less impact on the environment, with more income”. Indeed, one of the farmers’ demands concerns wages. “I have friends of mine who talk about suicide. What should we wait for the state to wake up?” alarms Jérôme Baille, organizer of the blockade of the A64 motorway south of Toulouse, this weekend at the microphone of Europe 1. If farmers regret not making a living from their work, Sandrine Rousseau says “understand the anger” . On the other hand, “I am not in favor of continuing with the agricultural model as it currently is. We need intelligent discussions because today, no one has the solution.”
Not always in phase with the agricultural and livestock world, Sandrine Rousseau did not hesitate to put on the table the environmental cause that is dear to her: “The subject is global warming, not standards. How do we do it? we so that farmers can still exist? How do we ensure that this does not dry up water resources? How do we ensure that the soils are alive?” she said, still on Sud Radio. However, it is these environmental standards that are regularly criticized by farmers.
What is being singled out is in particular “the enactment of rules and standards that are increasingly burdensome to supporters”, as Etienne Gangneron, president of the Cher Chamber of Agriculture, reported to AFP . Farmers also express their dissatisfaction and fear that the “EU Green Deal”, which aims to halve the use of chemical plant protection products by 2030, will leave them without solutions for cultivating land at low costs. Especially since according to the FNSEA, there is “unfair competition” from foreign farmers who export to the EU without being held to such demanding standards.
For her part, Sandrine Rousseau does not hesitate to question certain farmers: “the world is transforming. Farmers are the guarantors of the preservation of biodiversity”. But then, are they the first environmentalists? “When they make mega-basins and shave all the hedges, no, they are not the first ecologists in France.” The Paris MP regrets in particular that “some farmers overuse pesticides. We cannot reduce pesticides in France.” She is now calling for a “major plan to transform agriculture in support of farmers, not in support of the agricultural industrialists who are killing our countryside”.