France’s farmer protesters were joined by beekeepers on Monday, BFMTV reports.
Since Monday morning, protesters have set up 1,000 hives in Lyon’s Place Bellecour.
Beekeepers are set to condemn competition from honey coming from abroad. Marc Maisonnet, co-chairman of the Rhône beekeepers’ union, said:
The problem is importing honey at very low prices, below two euros, while the price of honey in France is much higher. This foreign honey is not necessarily less good, but it could be adulterated, there could be fraud.
As a direct consequence of this competition, Muriel Pascal, beekeeper and member of the Peasant Confederation of Lozere, can no longer sell her products. She said in an interview:
At the moment I have 7 tonnes of unsold honey in my mead, this is the first year this has happened. There has been a lot of good honey produced in France this year and last year, but there is too much imported honey on the market.
Beekeepers protest this Monday against the suspension of Ecophyto, a plan to set targets to reduce pesticide use and crystallise the anger of staple crop producers. The co-chair of the Rhone beekeepers’ union lamented:
It’s a disaster, it’s a step backwards.
The TV channel also reported live that about 20 farmers in the south-east of France blocked the logistics centre of the Casino supermarket chain.
The action began at 3 a.m. local time, the protesters are preventing the entry and exit of lorries with goods. The farmers called the measures announced by the government to support agricultural workers insufficient and intend to continue the demonstration as long as necessary.
In Spain, the three main farmers’ unions have announced more protests in the coming weeks, with a major demonstration planned for Barcelona on February 13.
In Greece, around 2,000 farmers protested in the country’s second-largest city of Thessaloniki on Saturday calling for increases in aid. Their action came a day after Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced further support measures.
Farmers in Italy have descended on Rome with their tractors after German workers blocked Frankfurt airport as part of anti-Brussels protests sweeping across the EU.
Farmers are expressing anger at what they see as overly restrictive farming rules and unfair competition.
Around 150 tractors massed in Orte, about an hour north of Rome, on Saturday. Protesters there called for better pay and conditions and announced their imminent arrival in the Italian capital, a reporter nearby saw. Protester Felice Antonio Monfeli said:
Italian agriculture has woken up. It’s historic and the people here are proving it. For the first time in their history, farmers are united under the same flag, that of Italy.
Last Friday, French farmers who had blocked roads around Paris for several days began to gradually lift the blockade after the authorities announced new support measures. It was later learnt that most of the blocked roads across the country had been unblocked. On Saturday, law enforcement officials evacuated the last two blockades organised by the Confédération paysanne (Peasants’ Confederation), the third-largest farmers’ union.
The organisation had earlier announced its intention to continue protests despite the cessation of actions by the other two leading unions, FNSEA and Jeunes Agriculteurs (Young Farmers).
In France, farmer protests have gained momentum in recent weeks. Protesters have blocked key motorways, blocking traffic with tractors, haystacks and piles of manure. Farmers also piled prefectures and government buildings with manure and waste. They demanded recognition of the importance of their activities and denounced government policies in the agricultural sector that they believe make them uncompetitive.
The movement erupted in France last month and there have also been protests in Germany, Belgium, Poland, Romania, Greece and the Netherlands. Farmers have blocked motorways and disrupted traffic in key cities with convoys of tractors.
