“Stop pumping us”, “He who sows misery reaps anger”… The message and the anger were clear. Dozens of farmers in Haute-Garonne blocked access to a refinery near Toulouse on Thursday in order to protest once morest the rise in the price of raw materials, in particular non-road diesel (GNR).
The operation, led by the Young Farmers (JA) of Haute-Garonne, “is a cry of alarm” from farmers who “can no longer manage”, explains Nicolas Ates, general secretary of the union which deployed the large means. Several tractors and trucks dumped straw, manure and tires in front of the oil depot located in Lespinasse, regarding ten kilometers north of Toulouse.
“We can’t get out of this anymore”
“The GNR has gone from 80 cents including tax in March 2021 to 1.15 euros today. That may imply, tomorrow, the end of Haut-Garonne farms, because we are one of the last departments in France in terms of agricultural income, ”lamented the secretary general of the Young Farmers of Haute-Garonne.
Farmers, who consume several thousand liters of RNG per year depending on the size of the farm, are struggling to cope with the successive increases in the barrel of oil, which is around the 90 euro mark. “We can’t make it anymore, and if it continues, soon there will be no more farms in Haute-Garonne”, lamented a participant, who also underlined the rise in the price of “tyres, scrap and nitrogen fertilizers.
