Whereas 20% of France’s farmers are rich and 20% make an honest residing from their work, round 60% are experiencing critical difficulties, primarily attributable to unfair competitors from third international locations. The career is recording two suicides a day!
They’re cereal growers in Beauce and Brie, winegrowers in Champagne or Bordeaux, goat farmers on Larzac or fruit and vegetable producers within the Rhône Valley. They’re all farmers, however they’ve fully completely different statuses, constraints and incomes. There are 400,000 energetic farmers in France. 20% of them do very properly,” explains Jean-Luc Guérard, a former combined crop-livestock farmer in Villers-en-Haye, Meurthe-et-Moselle. They’re the large cereal growers, the large wine growers. They’re usually elected of their commune or division, generally to the Meeting or Senate, and frequent the political leaders in Paris and Brussels. No downside for them.
Chickens imported from Ukraine
There may be additionally a category of farmers who’re rather less properly off. Round 20% of the career have good capital, staff and state-of-the-art tools to run their farms. They wish to increase to extend their snug incomes.
Lastly, 60% of French farmers are “in a tough, even very tough state of affairs”, as Jean-Luc Guérard factors out. Greater than the opposite two classes, their incomes are topic to climatic, financial and geopolitical hazards…”.
Ukraine is a working example. Because the begin of the struggle with Russia, Brussels has suspended customs duties, in help of the nation’s financial system. Formally, 8.1 million euros price of Ukrainian meat and poultry are imported into France. In actuality, it’s far more, since Ukraine has its chickens processed in factories in Poland, Belgium or the Netherlands, which then resell them in France with out being obliged to point their origin. It’s unfair competitors,” confirms a farmer in Bresse. The Ukraine, which isn’t a part of Europe, shouldn’t be topic to the identical requirements as us. For instance, Brussels prohibits manufacturing models of greater than 20,000 birds. Nevertheless, a Ukrainian oligarch has arrange an built-in manufacturing unit (from feed manufacturing to slaughter, slicing and distribution in trays) with 4 million chickens. “How can we combat this competitors,” asks Jean-Luc Guérard?
Distortion of competitors
These aggressive anomalies might be present in all skilled sectors. Europe bans sure phytosanitary merchandise for each livestock and crops. But they’re licensed in international locations that export their manufacturing to France. GMOs, for instance, are utilized in many international locations to supply soya for animal feed.
The identical goes for calves born in France, raised in Italy and resold in France; pigs born in Belgium and slaughtered in Romania for redistribution all through Europe.
It’s no higher for fruit and greens grown in Spain or Morocco utilizing fertilizers which can be banned in Europe (tomatoes, lettuce, grapes, peaches, apricots, and so forth.), or low-quality wine and olive oil offered by supermarkets. Typically below the distributor’s personal model title. (See beneath the 40 tonnes of eggs from Portugal).
Two suicides a day!
It’s all of the tougher for small-scale producers and breeders to combat again, on condition that manufacturing prices are continuously on the rise (diesel, electrical energy, fertilizers, animal feed, and so forth.), that milk, cereal and meat promoting costs will not be rising, and even falling, and that CAP subsidies will not be being paid out on time… It’s simple to know why farmers are in such disarray. And if we add the headache of the requirements that Paris and Brussels impose on them every day, it’s sufficient to make you need to dangle your self.
A research by Santé publique France, performed in 2017 on information from 2007 to 2011, discovered {that a} farmer dedicated suicide each two days in France (300 individuals in two years). The MSA research in 2019, primarily based on 2015 information, reported two suicides per day (605 individuals)!
In what different career do we discover so many causes to dam roads and freeways?
pic.twitter.com/p0mhc1PWH0
— VERITY France (@verity_france) January 26, 2024
🔴 La MSA de #Narbonne incendiée par des viticulteurs et #agriculteurs. #AgriculteursEnColere pic.twitter.com/YoNXQAL9D4
— Anonyme Citoyen (@AnonymeCitoyen) January 26, 2024
