French government to provide €8m in emergency aid to farmers hit by southern forest fires

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The amount will be used to “compensate for crop losses, financial losses (…) and the destruction of buildings and agricultural machinery,” the minister said. “This trauma (…) has left a deep mark on the local population, on farmers, but also on the entire country,” the minister told local councillors and winemakers in the town of Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse, indicating that his visit was intended to express the nation’s solidarity with the department. The extraordinary fire in the southern Aude department affected 17,000 hectares between August 5 and 10, destroying 36 houses, including about twenty agricultural buildings, and destroying two thousand hectares of cropland, just a few weeks before the harvest.

MTI