Angry farmers from across France drove their tractors into the heart of the French capital Wednesday morning to denounce "constraints" on their profession – notably a ban on the use of neonicotinoid insecticides to grow sugar beets.
Thousands of protesters joined the colourful procession that passed by the Invalides war memorial – not far from the Agriculture Ministry – before heading for Porte de Versailles, in the south of Paris, where the International Agricultural Show will be held in less than a month.
The National Federation of Farmers Union (FNSEA) said at least 500 farmers came by tractor, creating what authorities said were traffic jams spanning some 420 kilometres.
Early in the day the Paris police prefecture warned that traffic would be heavily disrupted, advising motorists to avoid the area.
Pesticides ban
The trigger for the protest was a government decision on 23 January to definitively close a loophole allowing sugar beet farmers to continue using harmful neonicotinoids, which have been banned in the EU since 2018.
The move followed a decision by the European Court of Justice, which ruled that member states handing out derogations to the ban were in violation of European law.
France is the world’s second-largest producer of sugar beets – an important export that, along with sugar cane, is used to make refined white and brown sugar.
For two years the government gave sugar beet growers special permission to use neonicotinoids after crops across the country were decimated by jaundice disease spread by aphids in 2020.
Neonicotinoids disrupt the central nervous system of bees, causing memory loss and paralysis that make it impossible for them to return to their hives. Repercussions for human health have also been documented.
As well as the neonicontinoids ban, French farmers are also upset over rising production costs linked to soaring energy prices, as well as a lack of water storage facilities to help irrigate crops.
Their last protest was in November 2019, when a thousand tractors conducted snail operations on the ring road that surrounds Paris.
