Protesting French farmers dump tons of manure at govt buildings
Source: rt.com
France was gripped by a series of protests on Tuesday and Wednesday, with an estimated 36,000 people participating. The dumping of manure in front of a local administration building in Chartres in northern France was mirrored by similar action in the central city of Tours, western Nantes and Toulouse in the southwest.
A farmer watches a pile of hay and manure dumped outside the DDT (Direction Departementale des territoires) offices burn, during a protest in Vesoul, eastern France, on November 5, 2014.(AFP PHoto / Sebastien Bozon)
"Manure, we can’t spread it any more. You can have it, help yourselves," one of the slogans said.
This year France has started enforcing a 1991 EU directive aimed at curbing nitrate pollution, which forced tens of thousands of farms that previously used manure as fertilizers to undergo costly infrastructure upgrades to comply.
In Dijon, farmers burnt an effigy of French Ecology Minister Segolene Royal.
In other parts of the country farmers organized by two of France’s main farming unions, the FNSEA and Jeunes Agriculteurs (Young Farmers) resorted to less dramatic ways to vent off their anger.
Parisians who happened to be near at Place de la République on Wednesday could get some of 60 tons of potatoes and 20 tons of onions, apples and pears grown in the region and dumped on the streets by protesting farmers.
“This is a symbolic action. Often farmers don’t harvest their produce because it costs too much and isn’t worth it, so it goes to waste. Instead of doing that we decided to give it to the Parisians to help get our message across,” Cyrille Milard, a farmer from the Seine et Marne department who participated in the protest, told the Local.
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