A New Hero in France

...Besides McDonald's, several supermarkets have been attacked, one of them in mid-September in Nîmes, a town on the Mediterranean where a French-Italian summit meeting was taking place...

...Similar campaigns in other EU countries have resulted in more accurate labeling, while several companies and at least one French food store chain are marketing produce that, they claim, contains no genetically-engineered soybeans or corn...

...on the world market...

...That discovery has been followed by concerns about high amounts of nitrates in drinking water in Brittany, and the presence of dioxin in milk in northern France and poultry in Belgium...

...They view the European Union and international trade agreements with deep mistrust, although the EU pumps generous subsidies into member states' agriculture...

...FRENCH FARMERS, however, are not a homogeneous lot...

...Regional landscapes were reconstituted over several acres, complete with farms and farmland, including Burgundy vineyards, Normandy orchards and expanses of grain that resembled Îlede-France...

...Farmers have set up stalls in city centers, giving away foie gras, and Camembert or Roquefort sandwiches, to be washed down with good red wine...

...Politically, the Peasant Confederation is close to the Green Party and environmentalist organizations such as Greenpeace...

...Jospin did what he usually does when faced with an unexpected crisis—promise a round table...

...Angry farmers are part of the French landscape...

...Today's holdings range from properties extending over hundreds of acres, with tractors and other machinery going day and night, to small mountain farms where the milk from a few dozen goats is processed into cheese...

...The pacifists won in the end, though only after the Berlin Wall came down: The Larzac base is one of many that have been closed in the past five years...

...Officially it was sparked by a decision not to allow the sale in France of U.S...

...today, 4.2 per cent of the workforce is employed in agriculture—a figure lower than the EU average (5.4 per cent), yet still higher than the proportion of Britons or Germans engaged in farming...

...For 20 years now he has been running a farm on the Larzac plateau south of the Massif Central...

...Getting everyone around a table is fine, provided the fare dished up is appetizing...

...The Peasant Confederation draws supporters from the owners of small holdings that sprang up in the 1970s and '80s, when a "back-to-the-land" urge gripped quite a few students and young citydwellers in the wake of the 1968 student uprising and in response to the various hippie and Beat generation fads...

...beef that contains hormones, on the grounds that long-term side effects for consumers could not be ruled out...

...Janice Valls-Russell writes about French and Spanish affairs for the NL...

...Small wonder, then, that the idea of adding American beef with hormones to the menu was more than many people were willing to stomach...

...Traditionally, farmers have tended to be closer to Chirac's neo-Gaullists and even the far-Right than to Jospin's Socialists...

...Summer and fall regularly bring a glut of tomatoes, peaches, grapes and other produce, plus an ensuing drop in prices...

...Some French fanners are suspected of having fed chickens on compounds that contain the spillover from sewers...

...Chirac promised that trade talks would not be allowed to dent France's economic clout and gastronomic identity, of which farmers were an essential part...

...Much of the general unease dates back to the outbreak of what is popularly called "mad cow disease' among herds fed on compound food including ground cow and sheep offal and bones...

...Simultaneously, Greenpeace activists (often tipped off by informers employed at food processing companies) have been trying to track down firms that use such produce...

...Although the rival organization tends to look down on the Confederation as archaic and impractical, it couldn't help being aware of the public sympathy Bové's actions aroused and is encouraging its members to cultivate consumers too...

...Visitors were invited to follow every stage of the food chain, and the CNJA was at pains to reassure them that quantity does not rule out quality, that tomorrow's fanning methods are rooted in tradition...

...What they are concerned about, rather, is food quality, environmental costs and the ethics of farming...

...Bove is a typical representative of the Peasant Confederation...

...This one will be about retail practices...

...Destroying truckloads of Italian tomatoes or barrels of Spanish wine, and emptying tons of unsold fruit and vegetables in city centers is almost a hobby for some of them...

...Bové was arrested and imprisoned...

...All these actions have struck a chord with the public (according to one poll, 80 per cent sympathized with Bové's attack on McDonald's...

...Hence the bitter transatlantic rivalry, now intensifying as preparations are being made for the next round of World Trade Organization talks in Seattle next month...

...On September 16-19 they organized a big agricultural fair laid out like a fun park, in Champagne...

...In the early '70s, after ground-to-air missiles were installed there, the Larzac area became the scene of clashes (largely masterminded by Anarchist and Trotskyist circles in Paris) between pacifists and the government...

...Over the past 18 months or so, Peasant Confederation members have joined forces with environmentalists to campaign against genetically engineered plants, soybeans and corn...

...The produce of its members is not directly affected by American imports...

...The union's hostility to international agricultural trade in its present form is less economic than ideological...

...Accounting for 70 per cent of EU exports in this sector, it is second only to the U.S...

...Once again, government reactions were definitely low-key...

...CocaCola produced in a plant in northern France was believed to have caused nausea, forcing the company to withdraw it from the French and Belgian markets for a few weeks...

...The National Center of Young Farmers (CNJA), a large, loosely conservative organization, tends to represent the bigger operations that are more often than not given over to farming methods that take stock of the latest technological and scientific breakthroughs...

...Chief among the organizations calling for action has been the Peasant Confederation, a farmers' union whose leader, José Bove, took part August 12 in an attack on a McDonald's outlet that was being built at Millau, a small rural town on the southern slopes of the Massif Central...

...French farmers then called on consumers to boycott Coca-Cola and McDonald's, the most visible and most popular symbols of the partial Americanization of the French way of life...

...But in private the authorities are worried about the targeting of businesses...

...This caution may have to do with what appears to be a shift in the political nature of farming agitation, and the widespread public sympathy those protests elicit...

...France, whose food and agricultural exports amounted to over $38 billion in 1998 (against just under $28.5 billion in imports), has been the main beneficiary...

...At the turn of the century, one Frenchman in two worked the land...

...Most soon outgrew the collective stage where a group took over a few ramshackle farm buildings and pooled everything—money, drugs, sex and, occasionally, work...

...A fund launched by the producers of Roquefort cheese received donations from all over the country that enabled him to be released on $ 17,000 bail...

...Inevitably, the President and Prime Minister took care to visit the fair...

...Nonetheless, the Peasant Confederation's attack on McDonald's this summer has embarrassed farmers belonging to the CNJA...

...The merger of France's two biggest chains of stores, Carrefour and Continent, at the beginning of September will, they fear, only make things worse...

...To begin with, their numbers have dwindled sharply...

...Overnight, he became a national hero...

...The resulting agitation has left a bitter taste in the mouths of food retailers, but some consumers find it has the sweetness of cider...

...Couples left these communes to set up their own homes, and those that stuck it out now bring up their families on small farms...

...The United States retaliated— or so it seemed here—by slapping prohibitive tariffs onto the imports of such French foodstuffs as foie gras, Roquefort cheese and seed mustard...

...They oppose aggressive suppliers of supermarkets and chain stores who put pressure on producers to force prices down...

...There, the sons and daughters of local peasants left their home villages in the 1960s and 1970s, fleeing the rocky land and harsh climate for the comfort of office jobs in nearby Montpellier or Clermont-Ferrand...

...This does not account for the unpaid help provided by spouses and children, estimated at one-third of all labor done on farms...

...This, they argue, obliges farmers to resort to excessive use of fertilizers and insecticides, or to rear cattle and poultry on questionable fodder...

...Farms fell into ruin and were sold off very cheaply...

...This year's surpluses, however, have coincided with challenges posed by international trade and retail practices, and with growing public concern about the quality of food...

...The government has been quietly watching this unrest...

...While warning against the use of violence as a means of political action, both Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and President Jacques Chirac have paid tribute to his determination...