Farmers block a major Leclerc distribution platform in the Var

A new blockage. Several dozen farmers set up this Wednesday morning in front of a major logistics platform of the Leclerc group in Luc (Var), at the call of the Peasant Confederation.

Arriving shortly before 5 a.m., the demonstrators, from Bouches-du-Rhône, Var and Vaucluse, blocked access to the Lecasud power station’s freight platform with tractors, trucks and bales of straw, observed AFP journalists on site.

Lecasud is the regional purchasing and supply center for Leclerc stores in the south-east, with its headquarters in Luc en Provence. It supplies more than a hundred stores and “drives” of the Leclerc group in the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur region, according to information published on its site.

Election campaign launched

This action by the Confédération paysanne, the third agricultural union in France, occurs in the middle of the campaign for the elections to the chambers of agriculture which will be held from January 15 to 31.

Since last winter’s crisis, agricultural unions have maintained their mobilization to demand a more dignified income, an end to unfair competition from low-cost imported foods, less “red tape” and “identical standards” for all. European producers.

If the FNSEA, the first union in the sector, and the Rural Coordination, second, agree to demand access to pesticides currently banned in France but authorized by the EU, defending “means of production”, the Confederation peasant woman pleads for a “fair income” through increased state support for the agro-ecological transition.

In 2019, the Peasant Confederation won only one vote out of 101, in Mayotte, where the vote was postponed after the devastating passage of Cyclone Chido. During the last election in 2019, less than one in two farmers voted.