Agriculture: FNSEA gives new minister Annie Genevard 15 days to take measures on loans and vaccines

The head of the leading agricultural union FNSEA, Arnaud Rousseau, gave the new Minister of Agriculture Annie Genevard “15 days” this Sunday to announce measures on subsidized loans to cereal growers, winegrowers and livestock farmers in crisis and the vaccination of herds against epizootic diseases.

The first emergency “concerns the agricultural PGE (state-guaranteed loan, editor’s note), that is to say a loan subsidized by the state and by the banks which allows farmers to finance their operating cycle, whether they are cereal growers, winegrowers or livestock breeders. That is the priority,” Arnaud Rousseau told AFP.

The wheat harvest in France is the lowest in 40 years, while in viticulture, as the grape harvest draws to a close, production losses are already “on average around 18 to 20%” compared to last year, he argued. In the Jura, “it’s 70% losses on harvest volumes,” Arnaud Rousseau stressed.

The Rural Coordination, the second largest representative organization in the profession, asked on Sunday to be received “as soon as possible.” “After 9 months of emptiness and 90 (days, editor’s note) of vacation, every day counts,” the union warned in a press release.

An epidemic outbreak

France is also affected by a surge in animal epidemics, with a resurgence of epizootic haemorrhagic disease (EHD) in cattle and different outbreaks of bluetongue (BT) in sheep.

For the FCO, the availability of vaccines and the management of losses are crucial at a time when “many breeders have already lost sometimes 10, 15, 20, up to 50% of their sheep flocks”. Arnaud Rousseau also considered that the number of vaccines against MHE was insufficient.

With two million vaccines ordered, “that makes one million cattle concerned with two injections” out of 18 million in France, which is “too few even if the entire national territory is not concerned”. “It seems to us that we must quickly increase to 3 or 4 million”, he specified.