(Marseille) A convoy of around forty tractors parades Monday in the center of Marseille at the call of the FNSEA and Young Farmers to demand the ability to “make a living from their profession,” noted an AFP journalist.
The procession, bringing together several hundred people from throughout the Provence-Alpes-Cotes-d’Azur region, gathered near the Old Port before traveling through the city center with signs proclaiming “We are still waiting for answers”, “Foreign products = cancer” or “We are here to feed you, not to die, let us off the hook”.
We want to be able to “live from our profession, not from aid”, explained Romain Blanchard, president of the FNSEA of Bouches-du-Rhône, recalling that the farmers had not stopped but “suspended” their protest movement at the end of January .
“The government and the administration have not fully understood our demands,” he added, believing that the mobilization of other farmers in different countries of the European Union shows that “we are right, that we are right to do what we do.”
“Everything has increased” and this increase in prices “is pulling us down”, regretted Charly Recchia, a thirty-year-old who works on a farm in the Var and drove for almost three hours on board his tractor to join the demonstration .
The demonstrators, who were transporting two trailers of manure, plan in particular to stop in front of the regional directorate of food, agriculture and forestry (DRAAF) and to pass near the prefecture.