Sawt Falasteen - French police make arrests as farmers close in on key locations

Farmers' unions, unimpressed by concessions offered by President Emmanuel Macron's government, encouraged their members to fight on for higher incomes, less red tape and protection from foreign competition.

"I'm so proud of you," Serge Bousquet-Cassagne, head of the Chamber of Agriculture in the southwestern Lot-et-Garonne department, told protesters headed for the wholesale Rungis market south of Paris, a key food distribution hub for the capital.

"You are fighting this battle because if we don't fight, we die," he said.

The government has warned farmers to stay away from Rungis and large cities, with Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin -- who so far has ordered police to tread lightly -- saying officers stood ready to defend strategic spots.

"They can't attack police, they can't enter Rungis, they can't enter the Paris airports or the centre of Paris," Darmanin told France 2 television. "But let me tell you again that if they try, we will be there."

Despite the warning, a convoy of tractors that started in the southwest of the country resumed its drive towards Rungis on Wednesday after spending the night at farms along the way, AFP reporters said.

Police arrested 18 people near Rungis for "interfering with traffic", a police source said.

Police units with armoured vehicles had been deployed along the A6 motorway leading to the food market in anticipation of their arrival, and police checkpoints were set up at access points to the market.

- 'Believe it when I see it' -

The government has scrambled to offer concessions, with the newly installed Prime Minister Gabriel Attal telling parliament Tuesday that his government stood ready to resolve the crisis and praising the agriculture sector as "our force and our pride".

In an apparent reference to contested EU rules, he said: "France must be granted an exception for its agriculture."

On Wednesday, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire promised that France would prevent a trade deal between the European Union and the South American Mercosur bloc -- a key grievance for protesters -- being signed in its current state.

He also said there would be closer surveillance of European food trading platforms to ensure that "farmers' income is not the first thing to be sacrificed in trade negotiations".

But farmers said the promises, including assurances of higher payouts under the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), did not go far enough.

"Several of these measures will take three or four years to be implemented," said Johanna Trau, a grain and cattle farmer from Ebersheim in Alsace, eastern France. "I'll believe it when I see it."

France is the biggest beneficiary of EU farming subsidies, receiving more than nine billion euros ($9.8 billion) each year.

Once the bloc's biggest agricultural exporter, it is now third behind the Netherlands and Germany.

Darmanin said there were 10,000 protesting farmers on French roads Wednesday, blocking 100 spots along major roads.

In addition to moving on Paris, convoys were also attempting to encircle Lyon, France's third-biggest city.

In Toulouse in the southwest, protesting farmers also tried to blockade the local wholesale food market, but were removed by police.

Farmer uproar has been widening across Europe, with Spanish farmers saying Tuesday that they would join protests by their French, German, Polish, Romanian, Belgian and Italian colleagues.

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F.AbuShamala--SF-PST