France's FNSEA (Fédération nationale des syndicats d'exploitants agricoles) brought members into the street this week to protest an E.U. directive on nitrates. The directive, adopted over 20 years ago in 1991, is intended to improve water quality by reducing the quantities of nitrates entering ground and surface waters from agricultural sources, principally from nitrogen fertilizers. France faces E.U. sanctions this year if it fails to meet directive requirements.
The country, as required by the directive, has already identified some 18,860 "nitrate vulnerable zones." If voluntary "best practices" haven't done enough to meet water quality standards, farmers will face compulsory reductions in fertilizer use. On the face of it, this appears to be what the demonstrations were about. Farmers in Le Puy, Tours, Rennes, and several other cities, voiced their opposition by driving tractors and wagons into town and dumping manure or old tires or other junk in front of targeted government offices.
Meanwhile, as it happens, farmers across the country have just received ballots for elections to the chambres d'agriculture and need to put them back in the mail before the end of the month. Under the law of the Code rural, the chambers have consultative, representative, and professional functions. And they exist at the departmental, regional, and national levels. They are a kind of corporate representation for agriculture in governmental affairs.
FNSEA, the largest farm organization, has its candidates for the chambers. And so do the Confédérataion paysanne (which includes José Bové) and Coordination rurale. A spokesperson for Coordination rurale was probably not being too cynical when he suggested that the FNSEA demonstrations, timed as they were, may have had more to do with mobilizing support for its candidates than it did with objections to nitrate regulations.
No comments:
Post a Comment