00:00Well, Karis, I can tell you that it's quite a surreal sight here this morning in front of the Assemblée Nationale,
00:04the French Parliament here in central Paris.
00:08I can see rows and rows of tractors, really as far as I can see,
00:11going all along the Quai d'Orsay, that's that road that runs parallel to the Seine.
00:15And there are, I would say, around several hundred farmers, perhaps, milling around behind me.
00:20And the atmosphere has been quite convivial.
00:21There is a police presence, but there doesn't seem to have been any tensions that I could have seen.
00:26But, of course, they are here for a very serious reason.
00:30They are here in front of the Houses of Parliament, demanding directly lawmakers change policy here in France.
00:35And the protest today has been organized by two major farming unions,
00:40the FNSEA and also the Jeune Agriculture, or the Young Farmers Organization.
00:47I've been able to speak to some people from those different organizations today.
00:51One man from the Young Farmers Organization, he told me that, really, he was here to express a voice of desperation,
00:57that financially it had just become completely untenable to be a farmer here in France today.
01:03And that's a message that I've been hearing over and over again from people.
01:06And then another farmer that I spoke to, a cereal farmer from the FNSEA,
01:10he told me that we can expect around 300 tractors present, which is a little bit higher figure than we've seen being reported in media.
01:19And he also told me that he's brought his sleeping bag, as have several other farmers that I've spoken to.
01:24So they're expecting to potentially be here for the long run today.
01:27All right. So, Ellen, tell us more then, what exactly are these farmers' demands?
01:35Well, Karis, I can say that the farmers here have two main grievances.
01:39And one of them, of course, is that Mercosur trade agreement that got the go-ahead at the end of last week.
01:44And that's going to create this huge free market area between the European Union and that block of South American countries.
01:52And really, from the farmers' perspective, it's an unfair agreement because it allows access to the EU for products from these South American countries
02:00that, as the farmers see it, will potentially be cheaper and will be undercutting their business.
02:07And, well, these South American countries are able to sometimes to produce products at a slightly cheaper rate
02:12because for several factors that they sometimes have a lower cost of living, so labor can be cheaper.
02:18And then also things like food hygiene standards can be different in those countries.
02:23And another big issue that the farmers here today have been talking about is how the crisis of lumpy skin disease has been dealt with here in France.
02:32And the government has really been taking a tough line of when one animal in a herd is infected,
02:37of insisting that the entire herd is then culled.
02:40And some bovine farmers or cattle farmers have been saying that they find that this stance is just too extreme
02:47and it's led to huge financial difficulties.
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