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      Farmers Clash With Police and Macron at Paris Agricultural Fair

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      At the annual show where the French countryside comes to the capital, President Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to calm a monthlong confrontation were met with anger.France’s farmers vented their fury at President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday as he arrived at the annual agricultural show in Paris, a giant fair long seen as a test of presidents’ relationship with the countryside.A large crowd that had camped outside the night before broke in and scuffled with police officers in riot gear while Mr. Macron entered through a side door to meet with unions demanding an end to hardships in the industry.During an hourlong closed-door meeting before the fair opened, with top cabinet members at Mr. Macron’s side, farmers sang the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise,” at the top of their lungs, blew whistles, raised fists and shouted for the president to resign, as skittish prize cows and pigs brought to the capital from farms around the country looked on nervously from their display pens.The rowdy confrontation was the latest in a monthlong showdown that has seen farmers blockade roads around France and in Paris — a movement that has spread to other countries, including Greece, Poland, Belgium and Germany.At issue are what farmers say are sharply rising costs, unfair competition from imports allowed into Europe from other countries able to produce food more cheaply, and especially European Union regulations intended to contain or reverse climate change.Agriculture accounts for about 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and the European Union says drastic change is required. Farmers say European targets are imposing suffocating administrative and financial burdens.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lab-Made Meat? Florida Lawmakers Don’t Like the Sound of It.

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      Legislators there and in several other states want to restrict the manufacture or sale of meat made in a laboratory, even though it barely exists. The space industry disagrees.Lab grown meat.It sounds like a plotline from a sci-fi movie about test-tube chicken fingers, but it’s a real thing.Start-up companies around the world are competing to develop technologies for producing chicken, beef, salmon and other options without the need to raise and slaughter animals. China has made the development of the industry a priority. In the United States, the Department of Agriculture has given initial blessings to two producers.Now, a measure in Florida that would ban sales of laboratory-grown meat has gained widespread attention beyond state borders. The bill, which is advancing through the Florida Legislature, would make the sale or manufacture of lab-grown meat a misdemeanor with a fine of $1,000. It’s one of a half-dozen similar measures in Arizona, Tennessee, West Virginia and elsewhere.Opponents of lab-grown meat include beef and poultry associations worried that laboratory-made hamburgers or chicken nuggets could cut into their business.Supporters include environmentalists who say it would reduce animal cruelty and potentially help slow climate change. Meat and dairy together account for about 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations.Other backers of the industry include advocates for space exploration, a subject particularly relevant to Florida, which is home to the Kennedy Space Center and the site of countless launches to the moon and beyond. Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX has its own outer space ambitions, has partnered with Israel-based Aleph Farms to research lab-grown meat on a Space X flight to the International Space Station that launched from Florida.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Farmers Block Traffic Near Paris With Tractors Before Macron’s Speech

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      The protesters are angry about subsidies, environmental regulations and foreign competition, with demonstrations now into a second day. So far, government attempts to ease the tensions have failed.Barricades of tractors and bales of hay snarled traffic around Paris on Tuesday for a second day as hundreds of angry farmers blocked roads in and out of the French capital before a major policy speech by France’s prime minister.The authorities closed off whole sections of at least seven major highways around Paris because of the protests, sometimes for several miles, as farmers demanded solutions to their varied list of demands on farming subsidies, environmental regulations and foreign competition.About 1,000 protesters with more than 500 tractors formed the road barricades around Paris, according to estimates by the French authorities reported in the news media.The traffic bottlenecks, while bad, did not encircle the city and were not crippling, and broader disruptions to the French capital, such as delayed deliveries of food and other products, were so far limited.Protesting farmers also blocked roads in other areas of France. In the southwestern region, where the protests started and where they have been particularly acute, farmers tried to block access to the main airport serving Toulouse by setting bales of hay on fire. The French prime minister, Gabriel Attal, was expected on Tuesday to give his first major policy speech since his appointment to the position by President Emmanuel Macron this month.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Protesters at the Louvre Hurl Soup at the Mona Lisa

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      Two women from an environmental group threw pumpkin-colored soup at the artwork, which is behind bulletproof glass at the Louvre and did not appear to sustain damage.Two protesters from an environmental group hurled pumpkin-colored soup on the Mona Lisa at the Louvre museum in Paris on Sunday, splashing the bulletproof glass that protects the most famous painting in the world, but not apparently damaging the work itself.As the customary crowd around the 16th-century painting by Leonardo da Vinci gasped in shock, the protesters, two young women, followed up their attack by passing under a barrier and standing on either side of the artwork, hands raised in an apparent salute.“What is more important? Art or the right to have a healthy and sustainable food system?” the activists said, speaking in French. “Our agricultural system is sick.” They were led away by Louvre security guards.It was not immediately clear how the women got the soup through the elaborate security system at the museum, which borders the Seine and contains a vast art and archaeological collection spanning civilizations and centuries.One of the women removed her jacket to reveal the words Riposte Alimentaire, or Food Response, on a white T-shirt. Riposte Alimentaire is part of a coalition of protest groups known as the A22 movement. They include Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, the group that poured tomato soup over Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London in 2022.The attack on the Mona Lisa came as French farmers have blocked roads, including approaches to Paris, in recent days to protest low wages and what they see as excessive regulation. Many new regulations in France reflect the attempt to forge a green, carbon-free European economy, an objective that the farmers consider too expensive and burdensome in the near term.The protests by the two young women and the farmers appeared to reflect two starkly different views of agriculture and the appropriate priorities for European society.Staff at the Louvre on Sunday tried to erect cloth screens to conceal the soup-splashed Mona Lisa, but the screens were not effective. Images of the attack quickly went viral on social media.The Mona Lisa has been behind glass since the 1950s, when a visitor poured acid on it. In 2019, the museum installed glass of what it said was superior transparency. Three years later, another environmental activist threw cake and cream at the painting. It was undamaged.The latest attack will heighten security concerns ahead of the Paris Olympics.The opening ceremony is just six months away and will take place on the Seine. A flotilla of boats will carry about 10,000 athletes to the foot of the Eiffel Tower, as nearly a half-million spectators, including many heads of state, line the four-mile route. The boats will sail past the Louvre as part of a ceremony conceived to showcase the beauty of Paris, but which has raised serious security issues that are still under review. More

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      Jonathan Shell Wins Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Race

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      Jonathan Shell, a former Republican state legislator, won an open seat on Tuesday to become Kentucky’s next agriculture commissioner, according to The Associated Press, easily defeating a Democrat who was running for office for the first time.Mr. Shell’s victory over Sierra Enlow, an economic development consultant, underscored the strength of the Republican Party’s recent focus on winning down-ballot races in statewide elections, particularly in the South and the Midwest.While Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, won re-election by beating Attorney General Daniel Cameron, Republicans captured the six other down-ballot races — including attorney general — by double-digit margins.Mr. Shell succeeds Ryan F. Quarles, who served the maximum of two four-year terms. The victory extends a 20-year winning streak by Kentucky Republicans for the agriculture post, whose sizable portfolio includes regulating the sale of fuel and containing animal disease outbreaks.Kentucky has hardly been unique: While Democrats once claimed all 12 elected agriculture seats as recently as two decades ago, Republicans now hold all of them.Elected to the State House in his mid-20s, Mr. Shell, now 35, was once hailed by Senator Mitch McConnell as “one of the most important Republicans in Kentucky.”Mr. Shell, a fifth-generation farmer, nationalized the agriculture contest, vowing to do battle “against radical liberal ideas that threaten our way of life” and to help defeat President Biden, whose voter approval ratings in Kentucky are down to 22 percent.Ms. Enlow, also 35, grew up cutting tobacco on her family’s farm. Calling herself a pro-business Democrat, she had pledged to increase the pay of agriculture employees and to ensure a robust supply chain for medical marijuana, which was recently legalized.But Mr. Shell’s party affiliation mattered most, said Al Cross, director emeritus of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky.“These are not races that get a lot of attention — people default to party choice,” he said. More

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      Biden to Travel to Minnesota to Highlight Rural Investments

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      The president’s push to focus attention on the domestic economy comes as his administration has been dealing with events overseas after the terrorist attacks in Israel.The White House on Wednesday will announce more than $5 billion in funding for agriculture, broadband and clean energy needs in sparsely populated parts of the country as President Biden travels to Minnesota to kick off an administration-wide tour of rural communities.The president’s efforts to focus attention on the domestic economy ahead of next year’s campaign come after three weeks in which his administration has been seized by events overseas following the terrorist attacks in Israel and the state’s subsequent military action in Gaza.The trip will take place as Mr. Biden is urging Congress to quickly pass a $105 billion funding package that includes emergency aid to Israel and Ukraine, two conflicts he has described as threats to democracy around the globe.But the president and his aides are well aware that his hopes for a second term are likely to be determined closer to home. Rural voters like the ones he will address at a corn, soybean and hog farm south of Minneapolis are increasingly voting Republican. A recent poll showed that most voters had heard little or nothing about a health care and clean energy law that is the cornerstone of Mr. Biden’s economic agenda. And the president even faces a challenge within his own party, from Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who announced his long-shot presidential bid last week.Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, declined on Tuesday to speak about campaign issues, citing the Hatch Act, which limits political activity by federal officials, but said that Mr. Biden “loves Minnesota.” Administration officials have said Mr. Biden’s trip was planned before Mr. Phillips announced his candidacy.The White House has called the next two weeks of events the “Investing in Rural America Event Series.” It includes more than a dozen trips by Mr. Biden as well as cabinet secretaries and other senior administration officials. The White House said in a statement that the tour would highlight federal investments that “are bringing new revenue to farms, increased economic development in rural towns and communities, and more opportunity throughout the country.”Mr. Biden will be joined on Wednesday by Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary. Against the backdrop of a family farm that uses techniques to make crops more resilient to climate change, they will announce $1.7 billion for farmers nationwide to adopt so-called climate-smart agriculture practices.Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will join President Biden in Minnesota and later travel to Indiana, Wyoming and Colorado.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesOther funding announcements include $1.1 billion in loans and grants to upgrade infrastructure in rural communities; $2 billion in investments as part of a program that helps rural governments work more closely with federal agencies on economic development projects; $274 million to expand high-speed internet infrastructure; and $145 million to expand access to wind, solar and other renewable energy, according to a White House fact sheet.“Young people in rural communities shouldn’t have to leave home to find opportunity,” Neera Tanden, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said Tuesday on a call with reporters.She said federal investments were creating “a pathway for the next generation to keep their roots in rural America.”Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, a Democrat, said he expected Mr. Biden to face serious headwinds in rural communities, in large part because of inflation levels.“It is a little challenging, there’s no denying, when prices go up,” Mr. Walz said. “The politics have gotten a little angrier. I think folks are feeling a little behind.”But Mr. Walz also praised Mr. Biden for spending time in rural communities. “Democrats need to show up,” he said.Kenan Fikri, the director of research at the Economic Innovation Group, a Washington think tank, said the Biden administration had made sizable investments over the past two and a half years in agriculture, broadband and other rural priorities.“The administration has a lot to show for its economic development efforts in rural communities,” he said, but “whether voters will credit Biden for a strong economic performance is another question.”Later in the week Mr. Vilsack will travel to Indiana, Wyoming and Colorado to speak with agricultural leaders and discuss land conservation. Deb Haaland, the interior secretary, will go to her home state of New Mexico to highlight water infrastructure investments.Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm will be in Arizona to talk about the electricity grid and renewable energy investment in the rural Southwest.The veterans affairs secretary, Denis McDonough, plans to visit Iowa to discuss improving access to medical care for veterans in rural areas. Isabel Guzman, who leads the Small Business Administration, will travel to Georgia to talk about loans for rural small businesses.Miguel A. Cardona, the education secretary, will go to New Hampshire to promote how community colleges help students from rural areas. Xavier Becerra, the secretary of health and human services, will be in North Carolina to talk about health care access in rural areas. More

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      How Did Democrats Lose Control of State Agriculture Policy?

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      How Did Democrats Lose Control of State Agriculture Policy?Democrats once dominated statewide elections for the influential post of agriculture commissioner. Now they’re hoping to win just one.Kentucky is one of 12 states with elected agriculture commissioners. Clockwise from top left: A soybean farm in Adairville; harvesting apples in Nancy; a tractor caution sign in Pulaski County; a livestock auction in Somerset.Nov. 1, 2023Jonathan Robertson was preparing to start the workday on his family cattle farm when a campaign ad in the race for agriculture commissioner of Kentucky flashed across his television.He couldn’t hear the narrator, but he noticed that the candidate — the name was Shell, he believed — was shown on the screen baling hay and driving farm equipment.“I haven’t heard anything about who’s running,” Mr. Robertson, 47, recalled a few hours later, stopping with his brother for the $5.99 lunch special at the Wigwam General Store in Horse Cave., Ky. “Who’s his opponent?”Neither Mr. Robertson nor his brother, Josh, 44, knew who was in the race, but they had no doubt how they would vote: “I’m a straight-ticket Republican,” Josh said.Democrats face daunting odds in races for the under-the-radar but vitally important position of state agriculture commissioner — and not just in Kentucky, where the two people competing on Nov. 7 are Jonathan Shell, a former Republican state legislator, and Sierra Enlow, a Democratic economic development consultant.Jonathan Shell, the Republican candidate for Kentucky agriculture commissioner, is a former state legislator and a fifth-generation farmer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More