Are farmers angry?

Some images are worth a thousand words. It is 9 am, on the forecourt of the Agen courthouse (Lot-et-Garonne). In front of the tribunal gates, seven CRS trucks form a blue cloud which secures the entrance. On the sidewalk opposite, around thirty farmers in rural coordination (CR) draw a swarm of yellow caps.

Eloquent allegory of a face-to-face, between a state and its peasants, in the fields and before justice. Worried about the attacks against the French Biodiversity Office (OFB), the prefecture “put the package”, confides a gendarme.

On the peasant side, we laugh. “Nice the host committee, but we are just there to support one of ours against the” cowboys “of the environment police,” said Christian, arboriculturist for thirty years.

A family of cereal trees in court

In peace, lawyers, judges, police and farmers enter the courtroom. The trial of the day concerns a family of cereal trees, accused of having “undermined in the aquatic environment” on its exploitation of Villeneuve-sur-Lot.

Disaffer, both parents and their son advance at the helm to give their version of the facts. Laconic and dressed in a gray jacket flocked “Environment Police”, an agent of OFB succeeds them and exposes offenses to the environment code he has noted.

These farmers have installed a nozzle – a pipe and a small bridge – on what they thought was a long dry gap, but which turned out to be a stream, according to the OFB. These works obstruct the light and harm the development of fauna and flora, which is why the office sent them a letter of convocation to justice.

“Never have they come to talk to us in person, deplores the father. The work lasted three months, we saw them prowl in the distance with their twins and their 4×4, as if they were waiting for us to do our bullshit to better verbalize us! »»

Standards and bureaucracy suffocate farmers

This lack of consultation between OFB agents and farmers, accustomed to looking at themselves in earthenware dogs across fields, often comes out in this kind of case. “The world is not divided between the bad farmers destructive of the environment on the one hand and the gentle environmentalists on the other,” notes Jérôme Carles, the defense lawyer. The reality is much more complex. »»

Proof of this is, the legislative bouquet has continued to garnish in recent years. Water law and phytosanitary products, European directives of good environmental practices, departmental and regional administrations that are multiplying: standards and bureaucracy stifle farmers. Simplification is one of the main demands of anger that has been rumbling for a year.

Whatever, for the prosecutor, “no one is supposed to ignore the law”. It requires 20,000 euros fine, including 15,000 suspended sentence, against the family, as well as the rehabilitation of the stream within six months. It is the cold shower for the son who has just resumed family exploitation, including the cash flow. “We simply wanted to develop our work tool in order to be able to work. Our farm is in organic farming and we are accused of destroying the environment, ”he sighs.

Reciprocal misunderstanding

The Environment Policeman leaves the courtroom through a stolen door. Out of the question to express themselves or confront farmers: the time is on radio for the young institution created in 2020.

A week earlier, one of his trade unionists set fire to the powder by dropping a clumsy comparison at the microphone of France Inter: “We have the feeling that what farmers want is not to see us on their farms . It is of the same order that if the dealers asked the police to no longer come to the cities. For members of the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions and the CR, the Cup is full.

A disavowal for 1800 field agents

The first requests the “suspension” of the controls on farms, the latter require the “deletion” of the OFB. During his speech of general policy, François Bayrou also went there with his little word: “When the biodiversity inspectors inspect the ditches and the water points with a belt weapon in a farm already put to notch Through the crisis, it is a humiliation and a fault. »»

A disavowal for the 1,800 field agents of this police composed of former chase guards, fishery guards and water inspectors. For more than a year, they have been the repeated target of assaults and degradations: fire of their offices in Brest (Finistère), slurry spill in front of those of Poitiers (Vienne), tires of the car of an inspector in Tarn-et-Garonne.

Only 7.5 % of annual checks concern the agricultural world

In total, since 2024, “more than 55 assaults vis-à-vis the establishment and agents” have been identified, assures Sylvie Gustave-din-Duflo, the president of the OFB. According to her, “the hysterization of debates” is deleterious and only 7.5 % of the annual controls carried out by its institution have a relationship with the agricultural world.

On the ground, “the state of the troops is at the bottom”, concedes Véronique Caraco-Giordano, union representative of the SNE-FSU. On January 31, 90 % of the workforce was on strike, considering the scapegoats of “agriculture in crisis” and a government which wishes to “relegate ecology in the order of its priorities”.

A feeling of “cultural dispossession”

Control of hedges size, cleaning of ditches, water quality … OFB agents interact with farmers to guarantee compliance with ecological standards – France is the sixth country hosting the largest known number of species threatened. In the countryside, these “intrusions” on farms are perceived as “arbitrary”, underlines Christophe, breeder in Sologne. The man evokes his neighbor condemned to carry out an environmental citizenship internship because of a poorly spread. “We walk on our heads, we want to give ecology lessons to a man who has been working with nature for twenty years! »»

In a country with a very marked rural tradition and the most powerful agriculture in the European Union, peasant status has long been valued in the territories. Historically, he is the one who “shapes the country”, the man whose beasts graze the meadows and whose arms cleare the wasteland and the embankments.

A feeling of “cultural dispossession” dominates in the countryside, according to Jérôme Carles, lawyer for farmers in difficulty. “Their social group has gone from the status of soil guarantors to that of polluters pointed out because it affects it, it is suffering. After an icy winter punctuated by the questioning of their mutual work, farmers and environmental police aspire to resume the key to the fields.