“Crop insurance: zero for fruits and vegetables”; “Private insurance, enough inadequacies”… Tuesday November 5, 2024, just before noon, a swarm of yellow stickers in the colors of the Confédération paysanne are affixed to the windows and in the Groupama assurance agency in Morlaix (29), like this was done on the same day in Aveyron, Manche, Haute-Marne and Drôme.
For its national action in Brittany, the delegation of 25 people from the Peasant Confederation symbolically chose Morlaix, where the damage caused a year ago by storm Ciaran put many vegetable growers who practice diversified cultivation in difficulty. (Le Télégramme/Sophie Guillerm)
A “rant” action, carried out in Brittany by 25 members of the agricultural union coming from all over the country to relay the national protest of diversified market gardeners, arborists and beekeepers against the reform of the agricultural insurance system for their crops in the face of climatic hazards .
“We had the storms Eunice in 2022, Ciaran and Domingo in 2023, and the recent floods in the south of the country in October 2024. Today, no vegetable or geographic sector is spared,” note the representatives of the occupation. Except “that in the event of an agricultural disaster, we have the right to nothing!” », says Clémentine Vaysse, a farmer from Vaucluse.
“Insurance companies are illegal not to insure us”
The fault lies in the shutdown, since January 1, 2024, of the State Agricultural Calamity system. Since this date, farmers have had to turn to private insurers (Groupama and Pacifica) to cover the multiple climatic risks of their crops.
“For large monoculture producers it’s easy. The problem, points out Thomas Gibert, national secretary of the Confederation, is that insurers refuse to insure many small farmers in diversified production, because it is difficult to evaluate their yields in order to compensate: it is illegal, An entire section of agriculture is under threat and this is an unacceptable situation! » Especially since these private insurances are subsidized 60% by public money (State and PAC).
Wish for “a mutual solidarity fund”
This is why the trade unionists, who occupied the Morlais agency until 1:30 p.m., asked by telephone for explanations and transparency from Gwénaël Simon, national representative of Groupama’s agricultural insurance. They demanded “in the very short term, compliance with legal obligations, with an insurance system adapted to the size of farms and multi-crops”, and obtained from the insurer the promise of a working meeting in the coming weeks to adapt the regulatory framework of the reform.
The Confederation also aspires to the establishment of “flat-rate compensation insurance on the surface, and not based on the yields of previous years by variety, which lead to apothecary accounts”, and “collective negotiations for a compensation scale harmonized at the national level.
In the longer term, the agricultural union finally proposes “the creation of a mutual solidarity fund, in which the agri-food sector and distributors would participate. »
“With every climate crisis, farms disappear. If there are new storms to come, market gardeners need to know who is doing what, concludes Clémentine Vaysse. We need a clear and reassuring system, which insurance companies pay to ensure the working tools of small farmers. »
