Paris avenue becomes farmland for a day
June 8, 2010 // 0 CommentsThe Champs Elysees in Paris showcases the bounty of farmers in France, and their concerns.
The Champs Elysees became a huge farm on the last Sunday in May, to focus attention on France’s crisis-hit agriculture. Paris’ most famous avenue was covered with plants, trees and flowers.
The event, called Nature Capital, drew two million people over two days and was organized by the Young Farmers association and the French forest industry.
Over a stretch of almost a mile, from the Arc de Triomphe down halfway to the Place de la Concorde, the Champs were filled with more than 100 type of grain, fruit and vegetables. By bringing in 8,000 plots of earth and 150,000 plants to the city and installing them, amid sheep and cattle, struggling farmers are attempting to highlight an aspect of French life which they believe is too often overlooked by Paris. There were also cows, pigs, goats and lambs and the livestock show showcased some of the famous breeds such as the enormously fat black-bottomed Limousin pigs, prized for their meat quality.
French Farmers: Pride and Protest
French farmers are already a diminishing breed but one of the worst crises in decades has further unsettled the sector, fuelled by falling prices and rocketing production costs. In the ravages of a crisis which has seen production costs soar and product prices fall, representatives of the agricultural sector say farmers are being brought to their knees.
President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government has offered an aid plan for French farmers with some 1.8 billion euros in loans (2.3 billion dollars) and 650 million euros in other support payments.
For the 55,000 members of the young farmers’ union, the stunt has a more serious purpose. Agricultural workers are one of the most alienated sections of Nicolas Sarkozy’s electorate and, as a steep fall in revenues causes anger to grow, farmers have used increasingly eye-catching means to draw attention to their grievances.
In April, hundreds of farmers rode into Paris on their tractors, bringing their worries about the future of farming to the capital of Europe’s agricultural powerhouse. Anxious and angry, thousands of French farmers gathered in Paris to demand emergency aid measures amid tumbling grain prices. Many of them travelled across the country on their tractors, crawling across French highways at 30 kilometres per hour to reach the capital by morning rush-hour.
More than 1,500 giant tractors rolled across the capital’s iconic squares and boulevards, displaying banners that read “Don’t sell out agriculture.”
Cereal producers, along with sunflower and rapeseed farmers, are angry that volatile markets have left them substantially bankrupt in a “black year” for their industry. The farmer’s union FRSEA rallied delegations from 14 different regions across France.
Sarkozy has in past months made several trips to rural France, visiting farms and trying to ease the anger of producers who say they are no longer making ends meet.
For Nature Capital, about 200 trucks rolled onto the Champs Elysees to unload the trees, plants and topsoil and part of the avenue has been closed to traffic.
Nature Capital was designed by Gad Weil, an outdoor events planner who 20 years ago organised a similar happening that turned the Champs Elysees into a giant wheat field.
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