Posted on 01/25/2024 4:07:54 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
France's government sought on Thursday to find answers to farmers blocking motorways and demonstrating at public buildings across the country, after a fuel tax rise ignited long-standing resentments.
"We're caught between rising costs and falling prices for our produce," said Dominique Kretz, a farmer among several hundred blocking the M35 motorway near the eastern city of Strasbourg.
Farmers say they are squeezed from multiple directions, caught between supermarket buyers and the food industry crushing their margins, and environmental rules on issues like leaving land fallow and pesticide use.
The last straw for many was the government's decision to phase out by 2030 a tax break on diesel fuel for farm machinery.
President Emmanuel Macron's government is at pains to avoid a repeat of the massive 2018-19 "yellow vests" protests -- also triggered by a rise in diesel prices.
It has kept a nervous eye on recent mass turnouts by farmers in Germany, Poland and the Netherlands that have also raised concern in Brussels.
In Rennes, the capital of Brittany, fishermen joined farmers protesting on Thursday outside the regional administration.
Most fishing has been banned for a month along much of France's Atlantic coast in a bid to protect dolphins and porpoises, at an estimated cost of tens of millions of euros (dollars) to the 450 ships affected.
In a bid to keep tensions low, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin on Wednesday ordered local authorities to exercise "restraint" and deploy police only as a "last resort".
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
President Emmanuel Macron's government is at pains to avoid a repeat of the massive 2018-19 "yellow vests" protests -- also triggered by a rise in diesel prices.
Leftist have never seen a tax they didn’t like.
Why is it a mystery to these people that cheep energy is a driver of economic growth.
Maybe, just maybe, the Leftist don’t want a strong economy.
The farmers if possible should grow small personal gardens for one year and let the state go hungry. It would not take too long.
There seems to be a pervasive attitude among the international elite that farmers are somehow nothing but dullwitted serfs who can safely be dismissed and ignored. When it turns out this is a radical misjudgment, they are uniformly shocked and dismayed.
Some one will still have to FARM the bugs.
Even bugs have intestinal flora and fauna that produce CO2 and methane and other things.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_SoyLinf-ww
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