a federation of market gardeners files a complaint for damage during the environmental demonstration

A complaint was filed Monday, June 12 following the degradation of an experimental greenhouse Sunday south of Nantes during a demonstration by environmental activists, we learned Tuesday from the Federation of Nantes market gardeners. The demonstrators had come to denounce the exploitation of sand for industrial purposes. “It’s the most complete misunderstanding, I don’t understand why we trampled on food, why we destroyed water networks (…)I do not understand why we call to burn a sector of activity “said Emmanuel Torlasco, director of the Federation of Nantes market gardeners, a union that brings together around 190 companies.

The targeted experimental greenhouse, in the village of Pont-Saint-Martin, was on the route of a convoy which gathered around a thousand people, hundreds of bicycles and thirty tractors on Sunday. This demonstration was launched at the call of a collective bringing together Les Uprisings of the Earth and La Tête dans le sable, an ociation which fights for the protection of this sedimentary rock.

The demonstrators carried out several actions of “civil disobedience” during their journey, including the one targeting this greenhouse where they removed the existing plantations to sow buckwheat seeds instead. A tag “What is burning the agroindustry” was carried on the plastic sheets of the greenhouse. According to Emmanuel Torlasco, “the experimental greenhouse which is 3,000 square meters has been completely degraded”the damage amounts to “a few tens of thousands of euros”.

“They standardize the ground”

“If we have chosen to symbolically replace and reseed with organic buckwheat the industrial lily of the valley and the greenhouses of the Federation of Nantes market gardeners, it is because we believe that all the land monopolized by this lobby should be returned to polyculture. -breeding and diversified market gardening”explained the organizers of the demonstration, in a press release published on the site of the Uprisings of the Earth.

“We, organic farmers, start first with the soil we have, and we produce according to the soil we have. And there, they, through their experimentation, standardize the soil”estimated Bruno Gris, secretary of the Group of organic farmers of Loire-Atlantique. “Afterwards, there is no longer any terroir. We would do that with the vine, all the wines would have the same taste. (…) We industrialize everything »he still lamented.

The World with AFP