Despite a friendly atmosphere, they all agree: the entire agricultural policy needs to change. At 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday, January 24, in a roundabout in the eastern suburb of Toulouse, around thirty farmers express their anger in capital letters on banners that read, “Our end = your hunger,” “for many farmers = eat local,” they hang effigies resembling farmers, and raise their glasses while enumerating their troubles. This 30-year-old cereal farmer has taken over the family farm from his father over the years, just a few kilometers from Toulouse. They are breeders or cereal farmers and usually do not have exactly the same issues.
However, today they are all in agreement: Europe is “disconnected,” the ministers of agriculture who succeed each other “do not understand the profession,” the competition from Spain and Italy prevents them from selling “at a fair price,” and living off the subsidies from the CAP is a “humiliation.”