Part of nationwide protests on Thursday (January 25) - now in their second week - demanding the government protect them from cheap imports, rising costs and red tape.
Posing the first great challenge for new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.
Jean-Jacques Pesquerel is a local union leader in Rennes, Brittany.
"Because we always have more rules to follow, we are always asked for more and we earn less and less, we are not living from our work anymore. Today we want the authorities to understand that agriculture is important, that food sovereignty is in danger, that we cannot ask farmers to produce quality, I would even say super quality food, but import products that do not match French standards at all. It's no longer bearable. It's not."
As Attal convened senior ministers, with the aim of announcing concrete proposals on Friday (January 26), farmers blocked major roads across France, which is the European Union's biggest agricultural producer.
On Thursday, protesters edged close to Paris, with tractors leading a go-slow in rush-hour near Versailles.
Some farming unions have threatened to blockade the capital.
Philippe Chalmin, an economist at Paris Dauphine University, says the government can't solve everything.
"Well, the situation is not so different with other European countries, and that's where it's pretty difficult for the government to answer because it's nothing more the case that the government can make prices. And even more prices don't depend on industry or retailers because we have European and eventually world prices. So those small farmers, small farming enterprises and so on have to live with the instability and even the volatility of world agricultural prices."
On top of their other concerns, farmers, especially in the dairy sector, fear they will be on the sharp end of efforts to lower food prices as the government tries to cut inflation.
And French retailers are locked in annual price negotiations with suppliers, which the government wants concluded by the end of the month.
Fearing a spillover from farmer unrest in Germany, Poland and Romania, the French government has already postponed a draft farming law meant to help more people become farmers, saying it will beef up the measures and ease some regulations.
