Pity the Danish or Dutch lorry driver stopped at a French farmers' road block at a time of agricultural crisis. His pig or veal carcases are likely to be doused with diesel and burned. Spanish truckers are used to similar assaults on their tomato and fruit shipments, and last summer French farmers left mountains of fruit on the steps of the Spanish consulate in Bordeaux. On February 8th - in protest at the Agenda 2000 negotiations - some 300 French farmers armed with hammers, iron bars, portable phones and packages of leaflets stormed the French ministry of the environment. They scattered chickpeas, wheat and flour, threatened the ministry staff, tore the minister's office door off its hinges, turned her desk over and hurled files out the window.
The French Environment Minister, Ms Dominique Voynet, has been a bete noire of French farmers since she co-signed a circular with the previous agriculture minister asking Breton farmers to use less pig slurry because it pollutes the water table. The sacking of her office is typical of the behaviour that has come to be associated with French farmers.
That is the ugly side of the FNSEA, the powerful French farmers' association which should compose half of the expected 30,000 demonstrators in Brussels today. On the positive side, the group is highly organised, with an economic unit and with offices in every French departement. The 15,000 French FNSEA members in Brussels today will wear yellow ponchos stamped with their logo, and will chant "Farmers want to live" as they march through the city. Their opposition to reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is total. They accept price cuts only if they receive full compensation, and they consider the word "co-financing" obscene. In private, some may recognise the need for CAP spending cuts, but publicly the association never compromises.
The FNSEA's president, Mr Luc Guyau, is standing for re-election next month, and the need to impress his members may encourage his firebrand tendencies. Although the leadership is not directly involved in violent protests, it often fails to condemn them. The sacking of Ms Voynet's office was an exception. Mr Guyau had appointments with President Jacques Chirac and the Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, to discuss Agenda 2000, and he could not appear to condone the raid. Ms Voynet condemned Mr Guyau's statement dissociating himself and calling on his troops to "respect property and people" as "limp".
That the two highest officials in France saw Mr Guyau on the same day last week speaks volumes about the special place farmers occupy in the French political psyche. Farmers now compose only 3.5 per cent of the French working population, or 880,000 people - compared to 75 per cent in 1800. Yet France remains the EU's largest agricultural producer and largest CAP recipient, with 24 per cent of CAP funds. Many French people, including President Chirac, think of themselves as coming from the country. Mr Chirac, himself a former agriculture minister, has always kept his door open to farmers and is much loved by them.
Regardless of their hatred for Ms Voynet, French farmers do not attack their Agriculture Minister, who virtually shares their point of view. The farmers often stage dramatic protests just when their Minister needs to bang on the table in Brussels, thus enabling him to cite domestic pressures.
The present Minister, Mr Jean Glavany, has rejected the idea of a partial agreement this week on agriculture, insisting that reform of structural and cohesion funds must be part of an overall package.
Unlike the Irish Farmers' Association, the FNSEA does not express opposition to CAP reform in precise calculations of damage to the farming sector and wider economy. Its stubborn attachment to EU protection is based on a dewyeyed philosophy of "the European model of agriculture" whose elements are "products, man and the soil" and farming "on a human scale". This can mean anything from a man with 10 cows in the mountains to a cereal farmer on an enormous John Deere working 10 hectares in the Paris basin.
Whether or not the Agenda 2000 negotiations spark further violent protest by French farmers, they will be one of the strongest forces against change in the CAP - and where change is unavoidable, for the highest possible compensation.