“A wall across the tracks of agribusiness.” A train carrying cereals intended for the manufacture of animal feed was immobilized by around fifty demonstrators, Saturday March 19, near Pontivy (Morbihan), and part of its load dumped on the tracks, noted a photographer from the AFP. “The off-ground system is going straight into the wall, we have to put agribusiness down”said in a press release the demonstrators, gathered at the call of the collective “Brittany against factory farms”.
Activists built a wall across the train tracks, the photographer observed, to symbolize “a wall across the tracks of agribusiness”they explained. “By dumping these cereals intended to feed part of the Breton livestock, we symbolize the link to the ground to be recreated in our agriculture, the link to the Breton land, this same land which cannot withstand the effects of the raising so many animals”they explained on their Facebook page.
“The earth can no longer regenerate itself; it is the overstepping of its limits that forces massive imports of proteins (including soybean cake from South America) and exports of nitrogen and phosphorus to less saturated lands. “they wrote, with reference to the transport, in particular to other regions of France, of manure from Breton farms, used as fertilizer. “We will continue to act. It is the lives of farmers who are at stake (…) The latest IPCC report clearly indicates a lack of political will” to change the situation, they said.
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The collective advocates “a peasant agriculture, living, agro-ecological, territorialized, job-creating and remunerative”. “We will fight for the disappearance of a destructive system, we will fight for the emergence of a truly nourishing, joyful and living agriculture”says the collective again.
The cargo was destined for Sanders, a subsidiary of the Avril group, according to the demonstrators. Several agricultural sectors in Brittany, France’s leading agricultural region where livestock farming dominates, are going through a deep crisis and are having negative effects on the environment, including on air quality. The Regional Federation of Farmers’ Unions (FRSEA), the Regional Chamber of Agriculture as well as Crédit Agricole and Groupama in particular, denounced Saturday evening “a scandalous action on the part of activists disconnected from reality and acting against the general interest”.
“We denounce once again the destructive actions of these associations or collectives which destroy our agriculture. (….) We are ready to continue our work to meet the varied demands for food products from citizens, but we ask for a reaction of the State to put an end to acts of all forms calling into question our agriculture”wrote these organizations in a press release, recalling that this train interception took place “while the UN fears a ‘hurricane of famines’ and food riots, consequences of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict”.