Bird populations in French countryside have fallen by a third in fifteen years
What's so infuriating in France is that farmers are basically sacred: nothing can be said, let alone done, to curb their behavior.<p>They benefit from all kinds of advantages: they don't pay taxes on fuel and don't pay for water (water in France is very expensive for everyone else except farmers), have all kinds of special conditions and fiscal deductions, and that's in addition to the direct payments they get from the CAP (around 12 billion Euros / year).<p>All of this for less than 2% of French GDP and the active destruction of the ecosystem, deforestation and pollution on a huge scale. In the French countryside all one can see are immense fields of corn and wheat, watered all the time (it's esp. infuriating to witness watering in the summer, at noon). The French countryside isn't charming, it's horrible, it looks like a grand experiment from an evil dictator.<p>Yet politicians from absolutely all parties from the extreme left to the extreme right and including everything in-between, fall over themselves to give more to farmers. Every single national politician attends the "Salon de l'Agriculture" held in Paris in February, etc. etc.<p>Why is there no one to say, this has gone too far; why can't we hold those people accountable for what they have done and what they are doing, I don't understand.