French Prime Minister Gabriel Atal is expected to announce today the first measures with a quick effect in order to answer the farmers who have been protesting for a week and who will decide whether or not to continue blocking roads in the northern part of the country.

Faced with the first serious crisis after his appointment, Mr Gabriel Atal he is expected to go today to meet the farmers to make “concrete proposals for simplification measures” with Agriculture Minister Mark Fesno.

In accordance with large farming union FNSEA, will move to Haute-Garonne (southwest)where the first highway block began a week ago.

This morning the A1 motorway, a major road connecting Paris to northern Europe, was closed in traffic by tractors and bales of straw in two places, causing considerable difficulties.

“Today we are waiting for the prime minister’s answers and if we don’t have them we will continue the mobilization”said Jeremy Ayard, union farmer in northern France.

“The mobilization will last”, warned Olivier Lilievre, a beet and corn grower, on a block.

More than 55,000 people mobilized yesterday, Thursday, according to a count by FNSEA, the majority farmers’ organization close to the government, which has been trying for a week to direct the movement.

The farmers that AFP met in many parts of France have different claimsdepending on whether they are poultry farmers hit by bird flu, winemakers whose wine sales have fallen, organic vegetable growers snubbed by the French, or major grain producers like Thierry Kazmazou, who grows sweet corn and green beans for a large cannery at Sigalin, in the Gironde.

In my opinion, “GNR (agricultural diesel) is really a prioritya primary reduction: it has to go back to 80 cents without taxes while we buy it at 1.20 euros, it’s urgent, it’s driving us into the ground!”.

Others want a minimum price for their products, or the payment of aid or compensation that is long overdue., even a moratorium on the pesticide ban as FNSEA has recently called for. A portion of the union’s 140 demands require legislation or negotiations at European Union level.

Blocking major roads

Almost everywhere in the country, protesters attacked symbols of the state and major retailers on Thursdaygiving the image of a radicalizing anger.

Without the intervention of the forces of order at this stage, with the Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanen, estimating that the farmers would not attack the policemen nor to the gendarmes, and that they would not set fire to public buildings.

In Azen (southwest), protesters placed tires, plastic, chicken coops and manure in front of the station, while another group blocked the streets. A wild boar was hanged in front of a building of the Labor Inspectorate.

For Charles Demeguer, an antidiabetic producer in the North, “by closing France, we might have answers”.

The Ministers of Agriculture and EconomyThey were expected to chair at 13:00 a committee to monitor the trade negotiations between the big distributors and their suppliers, which are supposed to protect the income of the producers.

The protests also brought to the fore plans for free trade agreements such as the one between the European Union and Mercosur, which brings together Latin America’s trading powers, and which is opposed by a large part of the French political class.

In France, food imports are increasing, sometimes without being subject to the same rules for pesticides for example.

While farmers are also mobilizing in Germany, Belgium, Poland or Switzerland, the movement is popular in France, but not all unions are in favor of cutting environmental rules.

The Confédération paysanne, the third representative union, which is closer to the left, proposes solutions quite different from those of the unions FNSEA, Jeunes agriculteurs and Coordination rurale.

Environmental NGOs are alarmed by calls to relax water or pesticide rules.

“Agriculture will not solve its crisis by reducing environmental measures, on the contrary, this will only make the situation worse,” says Sandrine Bellier, director of the NGO “Humanité et Biodiversité”.