A-Infos (en) France, CNT-AIT: Anarchosyndicalisme #185 - About peasant unionism and the next elections to the Chambers of Agriculture in January 2025 (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Currently, there are 3 main farmers' unions in France: ---- the FNSEA 
(National Federation of Agricultural Operators' Unions) and its youth 
branch "the Young Farmers"), and which has co-managed with successive 
governments the agriculture of which it was the sole union until the 
90s; ---- the Confédération Paysanne (CP), resulting from the "peasant 
workers" movement of the 1970s, rather classified on the left and green; 
---- the Rural Coordination (CR), which appeared in the South-West in 
the 1990s, and whose leadership is rather on the extreme right (even if 
in Haute-Garonne CR and CP had presented a common list in the chamber 
elections of agriculture of 2019...);
The MODEF (Movement for the Defense of Family Farms) which is the 
communist union also survives marginally.
For the record, the last elections to the chambers of agriculture took 
place in 2019 with the following results: first of all an overall 
abstention of.... 71%!!! (including 53.5% abstention among agricultural 
operators and 90% abstention among agricultural workers), which does not 
prevent unions from being considered "representative"...

On the side of farmers, the FNSEA-Young Farmers union duo reached 55% of 
the votes cast (i.e. 25% of those registered), the Rural Coordination 
21% (barely 10% of those registered) and the Confédération Paysanne 
20.04% (9 .3% of those registered). Modef, for its part, obtains 1.89%.

The next elections will take place in January 2025, and this helps to 
partly explain what happened during the farmers' movement of January 
2024. If the movement started spontaneously from an exhausted base of 
small breeders from Haute -Garonne, the movement quickly became the 
closed field of confrontation between the two main unions, each seeking 
to use the movement to position itself.

Many people in activist circles mythologize the Peasant Confederation... 
This union brings together people of very varied profiles, and in 
particular quite a few people who were there mainly because they were 
against the FNSEA, but without any other ideological motivation. With 
the current movement, we observe that some are leaving the peasant 
confederation to join the Rural Coordination, believing that at least 
they are moving and taking action! (which explains that after a period 
of tetany in the face of a movement that did not start on their 
political bases, the Confédération Paysanne also felt obliged to join 
the movement and that currently, it says it maintains actions locally to 
try to counterbalance Rural Coordination and not see its members flee). 
The Confédération Paysanne suffers, like the FNSEA, from being an aging 
organization, where positions are always occupied by the same people, 
and which does not necessarily respond to the aspirations of the young 
generation of farmers, those most angry against the system which is 
crushing them. .. (not to mention the young generation of breeders who 
find it difficult to accept that the Confédération Paysanne is showing 
itself as vegan and anti-breeding...).

What is at stake between the agricultural unions are in fact the 
elections of the chambers of agriculture in January 2025 (and the 
subsidies and advantages to the unions that go with it...):

The FNSEA is widely criticized by the base for its connections with 
those in power, particularly on the side of the breeders who do not 
accept that the FNSEA and its European branch, COPA COGECA, through the 
voice of Christine Lambert, ex-number 1 of the FNSEA, have supported the 
inclusion of cattle breeding in structures subject to emission quotas 
for industrial installations, IED directive. No one is fooled either by 
the "deal" signed in 2023 between the FNSEA and Lemaire and Macron on 
the end of non-taxation of agricultural diesel, which aimed above all to 
push farmers to replace it with biofuels, including the Avril 
cooperative. (the president is none other than... Aurélien Rousseau) is 
one of the main producers...
The Rural Coordination (extreme right) is trying to position itself to 
carve out croupiers for it, carried by the ideological wave of the 
extreme right which favors withdrawal into oneself at all levels 
(corporatism at the professional level, anti-Europe and protectionism at 
the geopolitics, xenophobia at the social level).

The Peasant Confederation is left behind and out of step; it is aging, 
like the FNSEA... Its rather pro-European discourse is poorly received, 
and it does not have a monopoly on commercial anti-liberalism (all the 
unions, including FNSEA and CR are against the Mercosur agreement ). 
Furthermore, we must not forget that the dismantling of the Mac Do in 
Millau by Bové (prepared with the agreement of the gendarmerie...see 
http://sipncntait.free.fr/article_1259.html) was to protest against the 
taxes put by the Americans on Roquefort imports, so it was in a certain 
way to ask for greater liberalization of international trade...
At the moment, we are seeing more posturing in anticipation of these 
elections. The FNSEA is playing constructively with the government, 
hoping that it will obtain some results which will allow it to present 
itself in the January elections by playing the responsibility card, the 
Rural Coordination on the contrary wants to play the protest card of 
agitation, as for at the Confédération paysanne, it is between the two, 
trying to play on both counts and above all in a less media-driven way 
than the CR but more "proximity".

As we can see, it's the usual union game, nothing really new or 
subversive in all this. Afterwards, what is new is that the people who 
initiated the movement in Haute-Garonne are not unionized and neither 
are a certain number of those who joined the blockades - particularly 
the youngest. But now things are running dry at the level of the unions 
established to go fishing...

https://cntaittoulouse.lautre.net/spip.php?article1379
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