Bumper potato harvests spell crisis for European farmers

More than twenty tonnes of potatoes were dumped in front of the National Assembly in Paris last month, heaped into piles and peppered with French and trade union flags, in a vivid display of farmers' frustrations. "It costs us less to give these potatoes to Parisians than to store them ourselves," Denis Lavenant, a farmer from the Yvelines region, told AFP. Belgian farmers also handed out potatoes to passers-by on a Flanders highway, coupled with leaflets denouncing crashing prices and EU free trade agreements.