- Title: France's Le Pen set to woo rural vote at Paris farm show
- Date: 28th February 2017
- Summary: PLESSE, FRANCE (FEBRUARY 21, 2017) (REUTERS) BRIAND WALKING WITH "FINE" PLESSE, FRANCE (FEBRUARY 22, 2017) (REUTERS) CHURCH SPIRE VARIOUS OF WOMAN PAINTING FRONT OF BUTCHER'S SHOP EXTERIOR OF BAKERY BAGUETTES PILED UP INSIDE VARIOUS OF POSTERS FOR FAR-LEFT FRENCH PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, JEAN-LUC MELENCHON (SOUNDBITE) (French) MELENCHON SUPPORTER, GERALD LE FEUVRE, SAYING:
- Embargoed: 14th March 2017 11:08
- Keywords: Le Pen National Front France farmers election agricultural show
- Location: PARIS, PLESSE, PETIT-AUVERNE, SAINT-NAZAIRE & LE NOUVION-EN-THIERACHE, FRANCE
- City: PARIS, PLESSE, PETIT-AUVERNE, SAINT-NAZAIRE & LE NOUVION-EN-THIERACHE, FRANCE
- Country: France
- Topics: Government/Politics,Elections/Voting
- Reuters ID: LVA00865FQ7NR
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: France's presidential contenders are all making a mandatory campaign pit stop at the annual Paris agricultural fair, as polls show increasing numbers of farmers tempted by the far-right's Marine Le Pen, if they plan to vote at all.
They could once be relied on to back the mainstream conservatives, but ravaged by years of crisis in the sector and feeling unloved by politicians many see as increasingly metropolitan, some now say Le Pen is the only major candidate who speaks up for them.
"Lots of us farmers are hopeful for Marine. Last year she really listened to us, she stayed a while with us. And we see her with farmers more than other candidates who we never see. You just see them at the show and for them agriculture happens in Paris the day of the show then afterwards they don't mention it again," dairy and poultry farmer Mickael Thomas said on Friday (February 24) as he set up for the nine-day-long show.
On Tuesday (February 28), Le Pen will become the first of the major candidates to visit this year's fair.
The latest Cevipof poll for Le Monde newspaper published on February 16 showed that 35 percent of farmers plan to back her in the April/May election, putting her ahead of the conservatives' Francois Fillon and the centrist Emmanuel Macron, both on 20 percent.
The farm show's mascot is six-year-old dairy cow "Fine" whose face appears on posters across the Paris metro.
She's from an organic farm just south of modern Brittany -- historically Socialist territory. Brittany's regional council is run by Jean-Yves Le Drian, current defence minister and close to President Francois Hollande.
Faded posters for far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon are pinned up in "Fine's" home town of Plesse, less than 30 kilometres from the site of a controversial new airport which has become a cause celebre for green campaigners.
But even here, the National Front is making inroads and in Plesse their vote more than tripled in regional elections in December 2015 compared with the previous poll in 2010, a bigger jump than the party achieved nationally.
"(Politicians need to) see the shops that are closing down, the farmers and others who are closing because they can't manage financially. They work for hours and hours to finish up with nothing. They (the politicians) are missing all of those things so I think they should come to our towns a bit more often," Melenchon supporter Gerald Le Feuvre said.
The left-leaning local mayor puts the rise in support for the National Front locally down to new arrivals in the town but says some of Le Pen's anti-EU, anti-globalisation rhetoric finds fertile ground in the agricultural community.
"It's true that for the farming community, Europe's hold-ups regarding the CAP, the Common Agricultural Policy, there is a debate which makes farmers anxious and people say to themselves, 'Actually, we're really far from Europe, and Europe isn't working for farmers'. Actually it's completely the opposite. If there's one sector where Europe is incredibly important, it's the agricultural sector," he said.
Dairy farming is critical to the local economy but has been at the centre of a high-profile crisis since 2015 as plummeting prices, the end of EU quotas and Russian sanctions inspired by the Ukraine crisis hit hard.
On his large dairy farm of 175 cows in Petit Auverne, Yoann Vetu and his two associates have invested in all the latest technology with robotic milking machines and sensors linked to a smartphone application which track the cattle as they move around the barn.
He says his farm is well run but he still lost 75,000 euros in milk production last year.
"We don't have faith anymore. Two years ago we were already in an unprecedented crisis. There have been several crises, I have been here since 2008 so I experienced a crisis in 2009, I experienced a crisis in 2012, then in 2015 and 2016. We know about crises and we can't get out of them. So the politicians might talk about it, but they don't act," he told Reuters.
While Vetu believes Le Pen's protectionist policies would be damaging for the farming sector, local FN representative and struggling dairy farmer Olivier Du Gourlay said his friends were turning to the party in increasing numbers.
"We're asking ourselves, what's going on? Because we really have been abandoned," he said. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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