French farmers confront free market which has favored large farmers
OVER 200,000 marched on Paris on at the expense of small time
September 29 In one of the largest farmers for the last forty years by paying across the board demonstrations of aggrieved farmers sums to all agricultural workthat France has ever seen. The ers, was not criticized. The pricdemonstration, called by the National es paid for agricultural goods has been lowered without a cor-
Federation of Agricultural Unions
Giscard D'Estaing's UDF, as well as the far-right National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen, but also the Communist Party, claimed to support the farmers, though their real interest in reaping the fruits of the next electoral harvest was obvious. The ruling Socialist Party was absent from the demonstration.
Right-wing manipulations
The RPR was particularly interested in the possibilities of winning farmers to their banner. In 1988, farmers voted for their Presidential candidate Jacques Chirac, head of the party and current Mayor
Young Farmers (CNJA), was organized to protest a series of developments that threaten to farmers. KEITH MANN KEITH MANN B EEF producers, whose complaints were particularly well publicized, were protesting declining prices paid for beef. There has been a crisis of overproduction in this sector as a result of relatively high rates paid to beef producers in recent years, as well as a fall in grain prices.
responding rise in consumer prices. Likewise, the mechanisms which allow intermediaries to reap huge profits have not been attacked.
The rapidly declining number of rural inhabitants has meant that farmers and others whose prime pursuits are agricultural now represent only four percent of the French electorate. However, according to one study, fully 17% of all voters have some connection to the land whether as retired farmers, their spouses, or those who work part of the time on the land. It was not surprising, therefore, that French political parties, mostly the mainstream bourgeois parties like the neo-Gaullist
Rally for the Republic (RPR) and Valery of Paris, at twice the rate of other voters. The week before the demonstration, the RPR mobilized their supporters to organize welcoming committees for the marchers. The far right National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen did the same.
The parties of the right with their liberal programs have little to offer farmers and agricultural workers in the way of solutions to their problems. However, the vagueness of the slogans proposed by the ENSEA and CNJA and the lack of any specific appeal to the poorer layers of the rural population means that the right and far-right could make inroads amongst the farmers.
Worse yet is the possibility of farmers turning their anger against their counterparts in other countries. Yet in spite of the years, as well as a tall in grain prices. Meat production rose over 5% in 1990, while the amount of livestock prepared for consumption in the first half of 1991 is over 18% higher than for the corresponding period the year before.
The agricultural commission of the European Economic Community (EEC) claims there is an overall crisis of overproduction with meat stocks currently at 110%. This crisis is partially the result of increased imports of cheap beef from Eastern Europe and the decline of exports to the Middle East following the Gulf war.
In addition, consumption has fallen of late, due in part to an increase in the consumption of pork and chicken at the expense of beef consumption, as well as widespread fears of growth-inducing drugs injected into livestock.
However, the stated goal of the organizers of the demonstration was merely to "sensitize" Parisians to the problems facing rural France.
The vague demands of the demonstrators reflected the failure of the main farmer and agricultural workers' organizations to reflect the sectoral and social differences amongst those who work on the land. Grain farmers, vine growers, cattle farmers and sheep herders, small-time farmers and large land holders marched together, and are for the moment all represented by 18 the same leadership.
Accordingly, the system of subsidies
Socialist government's support crumbles
THE farmers are not the only part of French society currently taking militant action. They have been joined in recent weeks by nurses, demanding hiaher pay and more staff, social welfare assistants, protesting against "the degradation of their working conditions", artists (including theatre workers) calling for a better social security deal and teachers. Furthermore, disturbances, often violent, have continued in the countryside. The Force Ouvrière union confederation has called for a general, cross-sectoral strike on October 24, a call that has received the support of France's largest union confederation, the CGT.
This wave of protest comes at a time when the ruling Socialist Party, which has pursued a "social-liberal" policy combining neo-liberal economic policies with relatively high social spending sustained by high taxation, is sinking in the polls in the runup to the 1992 regional elections, which will be followed by full legislative elections in 1993. As is the way with governments seeking to be reelected, a number of gestures have been made towards stilling social discontent, including a new 7.5bn franc "anti-unemployment" programme and plenty of meetings with union leaders. However, aware that there is little likelihood that it can retain power alone, the
SP leaders have been floating a new centrist "Federation for Progress", haps drawing in the Greens, dissident ex-Communist Party currents and any- , perone else who is interested. European Commission president Jacques Delors is seen as a possible leader of such a coalition.
The ideological cement for this alliance may well be provided by the rising threat of the far right National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose voters are being wooed by the establishment rightwing parties. Recent racist outbursts by the leaders of the two biggest such parties, Mayor of Paris Jacques Chirac and former President Valery Giscard D'Estaing, should be seen in this light.
The big unknown is whether the evident social militancy in France can find a political form able to impose an alternative policy economic and social on the government. Only thus can the creeping influence of Le Pen's xenophobic agenda be counter-acted — Colin Meade. *
International Viewpoint #215 • October 28, 1991
(FNSEA) and the National Center of eliminate tens of thousands of small
vagueness of the demonstration's demands there are indications that the farmers understand, however vaguely, the dead end that support to the right and far-right could represent.
In his speech, Raymond Lacombe, President of the FNSEA, attacked the trend towards "free exchange being considered as the final dogmatism", the "danger represented by the USA which is trying to assure its world wide supremacy", • and finally that "the collapse of Marxist totalitarianism must not give way to the dictatorship of profit"!
Likewise, a representative of Polish Rural Solidarnosc warned French farmers not to fall into the trap of competition with their fellow farmers in other countries. The "savage liberalism that has been imposed on our agriculture since the fall of Communism" he explained, ...nas plunged it into a deep crisis." Philippe Mangin, President of the CNJA, implicitly attacked the contradictions of the free market when he explained that "we are reproached for producing [too much] while people go hungry in the East, in Africa, and in Asia."
### Government response
The following week, the Minister of Agriculture, Louis Mermaz announced a government plan to deal with the agricultural crisis. This included a ten percent tax cut for farmers, which represents an aid of 290 million francs, as well as the cancellation of 100 million francs in back taxes.
Both the FNSEA and the CNJA issued statements calling these measures insufficient but a step in the right direction nonetheless. For their part, the EEC commission on Agriculture claimed on the eve of the demonstration that the solution to the problems of the beef producers is to raise the quality of their meat.
While the sheer size of the September 29 demonstration and the anti-market statements of the leaders of the two main agricultural organizations point to the potential of French farmers to defend themselves against the effects of the capitalist crisis (which will be aggravated by the Single Act of the EEC scheduled for 1992), family farmers and agricultural workers need a more detailed program that corresponds to their specific interests. Market prices and identical subsidies paid to all farmers regardless of the size of their holdings contributes to the elimination of the family farmer.
A system of differentiated subsidies and price supports which takes into account the number of people working on each farm, as well as energetic measures to help fight against desertification, is clearly needed.
Likewise, measures are needed to obtain social legislation for farmers like vacations, sick leave, maternity leave and the other social services that urban wage earners have won. *