French farmers warm up to Le Pen's ideas

27 February 2017 - 10:09 By © The Telegraph
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A SNIFF OF HOPE: Marine Le Pen, France's far-right Front National party presidential candidate, smells truffles during a visit to a farm in Grignan, central-eastern France at the weekend.
A SNIFF OF HOPE: Marine Le Pen, France's far-right Front National party presidential candidate, smells truffles during a visit to a farm in Grignan, central-eastern France at the weekend.
Image: JEAN-PHILIPPE KSIAZEK/AFP

Betrand Hourdel proudly pats one of his pigs, but the Brittany farmer is painfully aware that when he sells them his profits, if any, will be slim.

Hourdel blames the EU's "straitjacket" of regulations and political inaction for French farming's deepest crisis since World War 2.

Brittany's verdant pastures and ancient farmhouses are a picture of bucolic bliss, but anger in France's leading agricultural region is shifting sentiment in favour of Marine Le Pen's anti-EU Front National.

"If France left the EU, I hope things would get better," said Hourdel.

France is the biggest beneficiary of EU farm aid, but more than a third of farmers earned less than R60,000 last year, squeezed by falling food prices and cheaper EU imports.

Some recorded six-figure losses and many were driven into debt. More than 600 livestock farms went bankrupt - a record. On average, one farmer committed suicide every two days, said France's public health agency.

"We pay a lot into the EU and they give little back," Hourdel said. "We're paying for subsidies that go to eastern Europe, financing countries that are competing with us."

Hourdel, who also grows crops on his 121ha farm, collects about R544,804 a year in subsidies, but said his expenses were much higher. He would prefer to see EU aid replaced by a national system of quotas and subsidies, as Le Pen proposes.

Hourdel, 53, used to vote for mainstream conservatives. Now he feels that Le Pen is the only presidential candidate genuinely offering farmers a solution.

Imports of cheaper German pork and milk and Spanish fruit have badly hurt French farmers. Labour costs are higher in France, partly because of taxes and compulsory health and welfare contributions. Also, German abattoirs employ temporary workers from eastern Europe on lower pay rates.

President François Hollande warned against the country leaving the EU. Conservative candidate François Fillon said he would "take immediate measures to ensure that farmers can make a decent living".

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