“Why are they doing this to me?!!”, annoyed a truck driver this Thursday evening. The latter was about to leave the parking lot of the La Scalandes logistics platform in Mont-de-Marsan (Landes), when about thirty farmers disembarked to block the entrances to the site. A night operation to demand “fair compensation”.
Be heard again and again
The Young Farmers of the Landes had an appointment at 9:00 p.m. to block access to the purchasing center and storage platform of the Leclerc group in Mont-de-Marsan. At the head of the procession, the tractor of Jonathan Lalondrelle, vice-president of the JA in the department. “It’s a continuation of the two previous actions that we carried out. Today we have some contacts from certain supermarkets who want to discuss with us and then we have others who are rather in danger, trying to scare some of our breeders saying “but stop the actions, otherwise we will stop taking your animals, etc.”. So, clearly, today, it’s collective. We are there to defend all the sectors and all the breeders and so that the price increases of cereals are passed on to the purchase price of the animals to the breeders,” explains the union representative.
A worrying situation for some farmers who want to take advantage of the presidential campaign to get things moving. “We would be better off with our families or on our sofa watching TV, but we are fighting to get better pay in our work and because _some breeders, especially cattle and pigs, are working at a loss today_. Given the increase in raw materials… There are even breeders who think they are not producing, because they are going to produce at a loss. And so. There is a big question for politicians,” says Aurélien Cabé member of the JA office.
A situation that could worsen for the vice-president of the union. “With the context in Ukraine, the price of cereals will soar, it has already soared elsewhere, and the repercussions will take place. When we see that just at the national level, on a logical price spike after Covid, we has supermarkets (large and medium-sized surfaces editor’s note) who prefer to continue to preserve their profits rather than preserving the income of farmers… We wonder, but _what will happen when we are going to be in the hard with the consequences of the crisis in Ukraine_“launches Jonathan Lalondrelle.