French farmers have started attacking fruit shipments from Spain

French farmers have started attacking fruit shipments from Spain in the latest sign that a crisis in Europe's agricultural sector is far from over, farming groups said Thursday.

On Tuesday, a truck carrying peaches and nectarines from Spain was attacked by farmers as it tried to cross the border into France. European Union farming lobby Copa-Cogeca said dozens of trucks carrying fruit in recent weeks have been intercepted at a crossing in Boulou en Roussillon, causing problems for companies trying to ship goods into France.

"Copa-Cogeca deplores and condemns the violent actions committed in France," the group's secretary-general, Pekka Pesonen, said in a letter to the EU's executive arm, the European Commission.

Plummeting fruit and vegetable prices have hit Europe's farmers hard this year after an outbreak of virulent E. coli in Germany left at least 26 people dead and thousands more ill. Spain has suffered particularly badly after Germany initially blamed it for causing the outbreak, leading farmers to destroy thousands of tons of produce that later proved to be uncontaminated.

The European Commission has proposed compensation of €226 million ($323 million) to help farmers through the crisis, including €71 million for Spain, but farmers said it isn't enough. Spain's fruit and vegetables exporters association, Fepex, Monday estimated losses at €225 million a week since the crisis began.

A commission spokesman said that there have been no extra checks implemented at borders to screen for E. coli and that the goods are being checked in accordance with a 2010 French law. "We are aware there have been farmers protesting at the borders but not of any new laws impeding the free circulation of goods," he said.

Angelique Delahaye, president of Vegetables of France, a union of vegetable producers, said Spanish peach producers are selling below cost in France, undercutting local prices by as much as 40 cents a kilo. She said Spanish farmers don't adhere to the same strict labor-cost and pesticide rules as the French, which is why their fruit is cheaper.

"There is social and environmental dumping," she said. "We don't oppose the free market so long as rules are the same for everybody, but we oppose unfair competition."

But Juan Corbalan, head of the Brussels office of Spanish agri-food cooperative AgriFruit, said the problems have been caused by early harvests in France and Italy due to serious drought earlier this spring.

"All European farmers are very worried about this problem as prices are more than 50% lower than other years," he said. "We need a European solution to recover the confidence of the consumers."

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