(Newswire.net — November 6, 2014) — France – This year France has started enforcing nitrate pollution control EU policy, which forces farmers to use expensive synthetic fertilizers. In a wave of protests, French farmers dumped some 100 tons of manure and rotten vegetables in front of local administration buildings, aggravated about overregulation and sluggish economy.
The protest of farmers was organized across the entire country and drew the support of around 34,000 participants. In Dijon, farmers burnt an effigy of French Ecology Minister Segolene Royal. Tourists and citizens in Paris witnessed a scene when farmers at Place de la République – one of the main squares in Paris — dump around 60 tons of potatoes and 20 tons of onions, apples and pears.
“This is a symbolic action. Often farmers don’t harvest what they produce because it costs too much and isn’t worth it, so it goes to waste. Instead of doing that, we decided to give it to the Parisians to help get our message across,” Cyrille Milard, a farmer from the Seine et Marne department who participated in the protest, told the media.
In other parts of the country farmers resorted to less dramatic ways to express their anger.
French farmers are irritated by the overregulation of agriculture in France. Further, they complained over lack of protection from foreign competition that does not suffer from such hurdles.
Farmers said that market need to be regulated. They say that various companies import 80 percent of vegetables even though domestic farms could produce and deliver enough products to consumers in France.
“While government imports these products, domestic farmers quit the profession because they cannot sell,” said Milard.
On Wednesday morning, some 20 Young Farmers activists delivered food directly to the French Finance Ministry.
“Tomatoes from Morocco, apples from Italy, unlabeled produce: the Economy Ministry should set an example of ‘Made in France’, and that is not the case,” the group’s deputy leader Samuel Vandaele, said to the media.
For the sluggish economy, farmers blame widely unpopular socialist President Francois Holland and the food embargo imposed on the EU by Russia in response to economic sanctions.