French farmers are united in protest. Do they share a vision for solutions?

Two dozen honey jars sit stacked in a pyramid on a card table, their swirls of rich gold catching the early morning sunlight. Producer Denis Grosset stands patiently, waiting for his next customer at this outdoor market in east Paris.

The calm scene is a far cry from the revving tractors and bales of hay blocking major highways just a few miles outside the city. Mr. Grosset says that after the market closes, he’ll pack up his truck and join farmers in protests that originated in southwest France and have spread across the country.

“What’s happening to French farmers is a scandal,” says Mr. Grosset, who produces lavender- and chestnut-flavored honey in southeast France. “We all need to be in solidarity with one another. If we don’t speak out, who will?”

Like Mr. Grosset, French farmers have a list of grievances: rising production costs, excessive regulations on green policies, and free trade agreements that have choked their ability to earn a living.

But the farming community is not a monolith. It consists of various political and ideological groups, ranging from the right-wing FNSEA, France’s most powerful farmer’s union that is leading the protests, to small organic producers.

The demonstrations have been shaped by demands made by FNSEA President Arnaud Rousseau, a grain and oil producer with 1,700 acres of land and a top figure in French agribusiness. But other, small-scale landowners wonder just how much their own interests are being addressed by the agenda of figures like Mr. Rousseau. Can the protest movement unite, not divide, farmers in order to have a true impact?

“Agricultural production in France has gone down, farmers are bogged down by paperwork. ... Lots of things are not right,” says Vincent Chatellier, an economist at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment. “We’re focusing on their economic demands now, but this movement is largely sociological. It shows a profound malaise, an anger amongst farmers that they’re misunderstood by the public, and a feeling of doubt about their future.”

“Farmers need to see the point”

France is the largest agricultural producer in the European Union and the sixth-largest worldwide. But 17% of French farming households live below the poverty line, with some earning just €500 ($541) per month. In 2020, the rate of suicide among farmers was 43% higher than the national average, according to Mutuelle Sociale Agricole, the sector’s main health insurance provider.

French farmers have been deeply affected by rising costs of energy, transport, and fertilizer, as the government tries to bring down food inflation. They also take issue with several EU free trade agreements, which have allowed foreign products such as meat to enter the country without abiding by French quality controls, and offered products to consumers at more competitive prices – at the expense of local farmers.

Meanwhile, many criticize the European Green Deal, which aims to reduce greenhouse gases and provide healthier soil across the continent. But it has tangled farmers in red tape and failed to offer affordable, environmentally friendly alternatives to tools such as pesticides, which they rely on to increase output.

“Farmers need to see the point of these measures,” says François Purseigle, a sociologist at the École Nationale Supérieure Agronomique in Toulouse. “If you tell a farmer not to remove weeds from a ditch in order to protect biodiversity but then it causes the ditch to overflow, that directive no longer has purpose. The norms need to correspond to a farmer’s reality, or they won’t be accepted.”

The FNSEA, the pro-environment Confédération Paysanne union, and the more protectionist Coordination Rurale union largely agree on reducing France’s dependence on free trade deals and boosting the country’s food sovereignty. They’re equally pushing for better working conditions and salaries, and for less time spent on administrative tasks.

But where farmers diverge is primarily on green policies. The FNSEA and the Jeunes Agriculteurs union, with which the FNSEA is closely aligned, have called for a tax break on agricultural fuel used for tractors, after the government moved to gradually reduce state subsidies. And the FNSEA’s Mr. Rousseau has defended the use of pesticides and said he would support the development of genetically modified organisms.

Discomfort among the unions

But such measures have made some farmers, especially organic food growers, feel sidelined from the national movement. Others take issue with the unions at the forefront of the protests.

The far-right Coordination Rurale farmer’s union has taken extreme measures, spraying town halls with manure and this week blockading the entrance to the massive Rungis wholesale food market outside Paris – the lifeline to French food supply. 

“I don’t feel represented whatsoever by [Mr. Rousseau], who runs hundreds of hectares of land and works for [French oilseed group] Avril, which produces biofuel,” says Marc Baudrey, a sheep farmer in the Vosges department and a member of the Confédération Paysanne. He says he feels conflicted about whether to join the protests.

“A lot of these measures they’re asking for go against the environment,” Mr. Baudrey says. “At the same time, a farm is a business, and if you have negative output, you have negative revenue. So we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.”

Denis Perreau, a grain and sheep farmer near Dijon and a member of the Confédération Paysanne, says protesters have been too focused on small, short-term measures. Mr. Perreau says that only “strong, long-term solutions” will work to fight climate change and protect food sovereignty.

“We want to reinforce our industry”

This week, the French government announced several measures in response to the protests, agreeing to a tax break on agricultural fuel and temporarily pausing a plan that would halve the use of pesticides by 2030. It also announced €150 million in fiscal and social aid to farmers, and better checks and balances on food entering France.

“We will write the objective of food sovereignty into law,” French Interior Minister Gabriel Attal said Thursday. “We want to reinforce our industry, sector by sector.”

Those measures have been enough to satisfy the FNSEA’s Mr. Rousseau, who on Thursday said protesting farmers should return to their farms but maintain pressure on their local officials to keep the government at its word.

But the more environmentalist Confédération Paysanne is using the current momentum to push its demands further and has encouraged protesters to continue, in the absence of a satisfactory government response on farmers’ salaries and free trade deals, and a backtracking on green bills.

As the protest movement splinters, transitioning from highways to city halls, farmers will have another chance to air their grievances at the big annual International Agricultural Show at the end of February. But for now, there is a sense of the need to seize the moment – regardless of personal beliefs.

“There’s this feeling now that we’re finally being heard, that there is some visibility for what we’re going through,” says Mr. Perreau. “It’s the moment to join together.”