French farmers block roads, dump produce as protest edges closer to Paris

French farmers blocked highways and dumped crates of imported produce on Thursday, demanding urgent action on low farmgate prices, green regulation and free-trade policies as swelling protests moved closer to Paris.

Farmers said the protests, now in their second week after breaking out in the southwest, would continue as long as their demands are not met, posing the first big challenge for new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.

"All possibilities are still on the table," Arnaud Gaillot, the head of the Young Farmers (Jeunes Agriculteurs) union told journalists when asked about reports farmers could start to disrupt traffic in Paris as soon as Friday.

French intelligence services have warned the government that regional farming unions have called on their members to converge on the capital, Le Parisien newspaper and BFM TV said.

As Attal convened senior ministers with the aim of announcing concrete proposals on Friday, farmers used bales of hay and tractors to block major highways across France, the European Union's biggest agricultural producer.

"We always have more rules to follow, we are always asked for more and we earn less and less. We cannot live from our work anymore," 61-year-old farmer Jean-Jacques Pesquerel from the Calvados Coordination Rurale union said.

Crates of tomatoes, cabbages and cauliflowers that one group of farmers said had been imported were strewn across the A7 highway that links Marseille and Lyon, France's second and third-biggest cities. On the southwestern edge of Paris, dozens of tractors led a go-slow during the morning rush-hour.

Asked when the protesters would lift roadblocks, Gaillot said to ask Attal: "It is he who holds the key."

The powerful FNSEA farming union late on Wednesday handed the