Hundreds of farmers flocked to Paris with tractors on Wednesday to demonstrate against restrictions on the use of pesticides and other decisions affecting their sector. The demonstration comes in protest against the French government's decision on January 23 to ban neonicotinoid pesticides in sugar beet cultivation.
Hundreds of farmers flocked to Paris with tractors on Wednesday to demonstrate against pesticide restrictions and other decisions affecting their sector.
The first agricultural union, FNSEA, confirmed the participation of "about 500 tractors" and "more than 2,000 farmers" in a march from the southwest of the French capital to the Esplanade de Invalides square in the center.
The demonstration comes as a protest against the French government's decision on January 23 to ban neonicotinoid pesticides in sugar beet cultivation, after a decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union deemed any exemption illegal.
Neonicotinoids, which are toxic to bees and banned since 2018, received an exemption two years ago, allowing them to be used in sugar beet cultivation to protect them from yellowing disease caused by a virus spread by aphids.
"I don't feel like I'm poisoning the world with my neonicotinoids," farmer and union activist Damien Griffin said.
"In this case, agriculture will disappear," he added, referring to banning the pesticide "phosmet", which he said "undermines" the cherry sector, or banning a future herbicide used in chicory cultivation.
Another farmer, Cyril Millard, said: "We want to tell the government that no means of production can be banned without an alternative."
The Confederation of Bizan union, the third in the Strip, did not join the protest. In a statement, she denounced those who reject "any environmental progress."
The leftist union said: "The aspiration of social progress confronts the most reactionary and conservative attitudes."
For its part, the environmental non-governmental organization "Generation Future" stated that neonicotinoid pesticides are "more poisonous than the notorious DDT insecticide," which was banned in the 1970s, denouncing practices that "simulate agriculture in the 1960s, not today." ".
In recent months, complaints from the agricultural sector have increased due to various crises. Farmers gathered in small groups across the country to denounce the increase in their production costs due to high energy prices, as well as to demand the storage of water to irrigate their crops.
Their last major move was on November 27, 2019, when about a thousand tractors carried out a sit-in on the road surrounding Paris.
The demonstrators denounced the tightening of restrictions on the use of pesticides.
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