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 food, why we destroyed water networks (…), I don’t understand why we call to burn down a sector of activity “said Emmanuel Torlasco, director of the Federation of Nantes market gardeners, a union which brings together around 190 companies.
The experimental greenhouse in question, 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 association 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 “Let agroindustry burn” tag was worn on the plastic sheeting in 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 floor”
“If we have chosen to replace and symbolically 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 Uprisings of the Earth website.
“We organic farmers start from the soil we have, and we produce according to the soil we have. And there, they, through their experimentation, they standardize the soil, ”said Bruno Gris, secretary of the Loire-Atlantique Organic Farmers Group. “Afterwards, there is no longer any terroir. We would do that with the vine, all the wines would have the same taste. (…) We are industrializing everything,” he further lamented.
