some farmers’ roadblocks still stand in the South-West

Blockages are still in place on the A75 motorway, in Lozère and Aveyron, as well as in Landes. In Gers, tensions broke out between farmers and the police on Saturday evening.

Some roads and highways remain blocked in the South-West on Sunday, December 28, by farmers unhappy with the government’s management of lumpy skin disease (LCD), while the Minister of Agriculture announced on Saturday that “more than 50% of the 750,000 cattle have already been vaccinated” in the South-West. A dam, located in Ordan-Larroque, at the entrance to Auch (Gers), is still in place, the co-president of the Rural Coordination (CR) of Gers, Jérôme Courrèges, assured AFP on Sunday afternoon.

According to the gendarmerie, blockages remained in place on Sunday morning on the A75, in Le Buisson (Lozère) and in Sévérac-d’Aveyron, the A64 in Carbonne (Haute-Garonne), the RN88 in Baraqueville (Aveyron), near Rodez, the RD824 Tartas (Landes) and the D834 Campet-et-Lamolère (Landes), near Mont-de-Marsan. However, at the end of the afternoon, traffic had resumed in both directions, on the A64, near Pau and Urt (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), Vinci Autoroutes told ICI Béarn Bigorre (formerly France Bleu).

Actions were carried out on Saturday evening. During the night from Saturday to Sunday, earth and manure were dumped in front of the town hall of Tartas (Landes) by angry farmers from the Rural Coordination. The mayor of the town, Jean-François Broquères, assures from ICI Gascognenot understanding these facts. “I am a little questionable about the added value that this brings to their fight,” he said. “Cleaning will fall to municipal agents who have nothing to do with it”regrets Jean-François Broquères. A similar action took place this Friday, in front of the French Biodiversity Office, whose premises are based in Tartas.

Saturday evening, a tractor “sprayed the front of the newspaper La Dépêche du Midi” in Auch, declared the Gers prefecture. The driver advanced towards the police, who carried out “summons with weapon drawn”, she continues in a press release, specifying that the farmer stopped the engine before being arrested. “Calm returned very quickly to the site and the demonstrators present quickly began cleaning up their misdeeds,” she says. “It’s shameful to come to this, to rob farmers,” Vincent Arbusti, spokesperson for the CR du Gers, told AFP.

“When people, farmers, tractor drivers are threatened by a weapon, I completely understand the emotion (…) In this case, it lasted three seconds. As soon as he cut off the engine, the weapons were put away. There was no violence”explained to AFP the prefect of Gers, Alain Castanier. “Many farmers in the Gers are in very difficult situations. Some have 300, 400 or 500 euros of income per month, working 60 hours per week. I have never experienced such a difficult situation for agriculture,” he said again. “I understand the demonstrations, I don’t understand the damage”he added.

For the Minister of the Interior, Laurent Nuñez, “numerous spontaneous demonstrations were able to take place without being hindered, allowing broad expression of demands. Auch has been the scene of significant damage for several days,” he writes about X, adding that “the police intervened (…) in compliance with the legal framework”.