FRANCE: The Manure Revolt

It was the official opening of the Orleans-to-Tours superhighway, and French Minister of Development Robert Galley and a bevy of lesser government officials were to be on hand for the ceremony. But the celebration was unceremoniously ruined last week by angry local farmers. They first blocked the highway by putting up a wall of flaming tires, then spread manure and urine around the outdoor buffet tables where champagne and petits fours were to be served. After looting the area of decorative plants and flowers, they finally settled down to drink the champagne themselves.

The farmers were protesting their discontent with rising inflation, falling income and the government’s refusal to make fundamental reforms. Fruit growers complain that they get only 9¢ for a pound of peaches that sells for 40¢ to 60¢ at the retail level. Farmers charge that the cost of a tractor less than 30 years ago was equivalent to the selling price of six hogs; now it equals 100. The purchasing power of the French peasant, it is estimated, will shrink 17% this year alone—while government policy permits massive imports of competing foreign meats, fruits and vegetables.

In protest, farmers throughout the country have been creating havoc. On the major highway to Spain, a thousand fruit growers dumped tons of pears onto the roadway, creating a twelve-mile traffic jam. In Le Havre, Norman peasants stopped dockers from unloading beef from an Argentine ship and, in a variation of the old Boston Tea Party, threw tons of the meat into the Channel. In other areas farmers hung dead chickens in front of local officials’ homes, let pigs and cattle loose in village streets, and even halted the sacrosanct Tour de France bicycle race by covering the road with nails.

In their frustration, the farmers vow to continue to make life increasingly uncomfortable for officials on all levels of government, indeed for all Frenchmen, and little is being done to stop them. In the Limoges area last week, for example, peasants parked their tractors across a well-traveled tourist road; when motorists tried to turn back from the barrier, they found themselves trapped by more tractors in the opposite direction.

When an indignant Parisian driver shouted “Some people haven’t got a thing to do,” he was promptly pummeled with a volley of stones and insults. A gendarme who witnessed it all called out “Enjoy yourselves,” before turning his back and walking away.