The peasant demonstration is an example of the action of outside lobbying. Where, usually, the lobbying is done in hushed meetings, restaurants or offices on the Champs-Elysées, farmers have experienced a method which is very specific: the balance of power in the field. Yesterday, near Mont-Saint-Michel, the Couesnon in his madness has in Normandy, the dairy, those that produce milk, have dumped millions of liters of milk in fields, sometimes by giving consumers. Other actions like this to take place across Europe and organized by the APLI and EMB organizing the milk strike.

Worse and worse

Also flourish on the edges of roads through the countryside, an intense campaign of billboards teasing forcefully: "Milk, until when? "" Make your milk supply. " They protest against so many things. 1, a decrease of the remuneration of a liter of milk , which saw record last year, and as a result of increased global production decline sharply. 2, the scheduled end of milk quotas imposed by the EU within the framework of the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) provided in 2015. For many, milk quotas, production volume allocated to each farmer , was a master of overall volumes of production and hence prices in the market. For Europe, this is a barrier to the principle of free competition.

Agricultural protests are not new. Each of the economic crises facing this sector is the subject of intense negotiations with political power. Pork, chicken, beef, milk, wine, fruit and vegetables every year sees its sector in crisis. And it is ultimately only the grain of the Beauce and Brie, to do almost never make their voices heard, except when s e preparing amendments allocation of EU subsidies .

Follow the white line

You have to go on a dairy farm to measure the work that requires management. Although living conditions have improved by automating tasks, the fact remains that this is a tedious job that leaves little room for rest, knowing that they must milk the cows every day, monitor these heifers which will then give the dairy store food, cleaning the barn during the winter, caring for animals ... Therefore, one can understand the dismay of farmers who are in debt, sometimes heavily, to buy, or redeem, or creation, operation and who is now in the most comprehensive financial troubles, at least in the short term.

A confusion that does not seem to understand the FNSEA , the powerful farmers' union, super-majority in the profession. Its president, Jean-Michel Lemetayer, is close to the UMP, who was tipped to lead the list in the European elections in the Western region. Last week, at the opening of Space, it was widely booed by protesters. The world upside down. Especially some of the people gathered around him were members of his union. Although the movement is led by Dairy Farmers' Confederation (which has a reciprocating Jose Bove, who has experienced its heyday in the elections of agricultural early 2000s), many members of the FNSEA join them. And Bruno Le Maire, Minister of Agriculture, can be reassuring, the fact remains, for the ruling party which has made ​​farmers a stable electoral base assumed this task done.

The farmers are bitter experience of an agricultural system based on subsidies and productivism at all costs. When reduced subsidies, or control of the market is more centralized, the whole industry pays the price. In this context, there will always be someone, globalized markets, to produce milk cheaper. With the exception of fresh milk from the milk of little importance to food processors. International markets, milk powder has no origin, only the price matters. Values ​​because the quality is currently difficult. Citizens who have now the sympathy for this movement are the same agricultural seeking the shelves of supermarkets promoting or low price. These two behaviors are at least paradoxical, at worst inconsistent.

Difficult to find solutions in this context. Some dairy farmers are silent, however. The reason for their silence is in their conversion to organic farming. The price paid to them is greater than their production costs. The reason is in short supply in the market relative to demand. The French food imports each million liters of organic milk to satisfy his needs. All dairy farmers can not go organic, though, until it is an option available to them which has the double merit of respecting the principles of this profession, love nature, and ensure a level of income satisfying.

Michael Cabon

Bonus gift. Coming up, the whammy of WTO reform

In the corridors of the Commission moves a large number of organizations who tremble at the idea that the reform proposed by the World Trade Organization a reality. To promote international trade, it is expected the end of the refunds in Europe. The refunds represent a sum of money paid by Europe to farmers and industrialists, especially the latter, to compensate for the difference between the price of the domestic market and the global market. This can represent huge sums. Thus, Tilly-Sabco, which makes 100 million euros in sales a year, received 20 million euros in Europe. Its net profit last year was 7 million. Without EU subsidies, the result would be negative $ 13 million. The poulterer Sweet received 63 million euros ... But these industrial employ directly or not, thousands of farmers across France who deliver their products and would therefore be the first victims of the end of this system, knowing that the chickens here amount as well as Brazilian or Indonesian heat.

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