2024-05-04 06:58:00
Another hard blow for the executive following the agricultural crisis which hit all of France at the start of the year. The government suffered a failure during the night from Friday to Saturday in committee at the Assembly, on its project to create “agricultural land investment groups” (GFAI), to remove obstacles to the installation of new farmers, setback that he can try to make up for in the hemicycle.
According to the executive, which introduced the measure in its agricultural bill, these groups must make it possible to raise money from public or private investors in order to buy land, and rent it to new farmers, then relieved of the need to finance the purchase.
“In the coming five to ten years, a large number of agricultural areas will become free, will change ownership,” insisted the Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau, arguing that more and more land was leaving the circle. family, and that the new arrivals were faced with difficulties in financing the purchase of land. After a crucial meeting last Thursday, the head of state told agricultural unions that “he did not believe in the end of the angry movements” and would only deliver his “vision” for agriculture in several months, several union leaders reported.
A “rogue article”
The general rapporteur Eric Girardin (Renaissance) had planned to submit a rewrite of the article to the deputies, in the face of fears raised by an opposition coalition and certain Macronist elected officials. He planned to insert more safeguards, in particular a period of ten years before the group might resell the land, to limit the phenomena of speculation. But the amendments to delete the article were adopted by 24 votes to 16.
“The priority for land would be to repair deregulation”, declared the socialist deputy Dominique Potier, when the Insoumise Aurélie Trouvé castigated a “scoundrel article” which “aims to kill family farming in favor of capitalist agriculture” .
“We are going to make farmers tenants for life of a production tool that they will no longer own,” judged RN deputy Grégoire de Fournas. Francis Dubois (LR) and Charles de Courson (Liot) both spoke of their fear of an “increase in the cost of agricultural land”. “There is no intention of the government to deregulate land,” replied the minister, stressing that “the increase in the (price of) land is already existing.” A new rewriting of the article might be proposed for the passage of the text in the Hemicycle, expected from May 14.
Upcoming tax reform?
The rest of the examination of the bill, which is to continue on Saturday, had so far gone smoothly for the executive. Earlier on Friday, MPs validated the creation of a new national Bac+3 level diploma to train for professions in agriculture and the agri-food industry.
It would be offered “jointly” by public higher education establishments and “public or private” agricultural technical education establishments. They also adopted a series of articles, in particular to clarify the missions of public technical agricultural education, which must provide modules on the agroecological transition or organic agriculture.
The deputies also approved guidelines to follow for public agricultural policies, with the non-binding objective of reaching at least 400,000 farms in the territory by 2035.
While many deputies deplored the absence of a tax measure in the text – the government referring this question to the budgetary debates in the fall – several amendments included in the text an objective for the executive to reform taxation on the transfer of agricultural property and land.
The creation of a “France services agriculture” network, a sort of departmental one-stop shop to bring together the necessary services to guide farmers who wish to settle in the territory, or on the contrary cease their activity, has also been approved.
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