Lhe agricultural protest is taking hold throughout Europe and France is no longer an exception, with demonstrations spreading across the entire country. This agricultural crisis comes from afar and has its roots in widespread mistreatment.
For more than thirty years, farmers have been subject to strong economic pressure from food manufacturers and large distributors who seek to lower the cost of food. Between 1990 and 2022, we experienced a constant decline in the purchase price of agricultural raw materials (mainly milk and meat), of which they were the first victims.
If things have improved slightly with the implementation of the EGalim law [pour l’équilibre des relations commerciales dans le secteur agricole et alimentaire et une alimentation saine, durable et accessible à tous], farmers fear that with the inflation we are currently experiencing, they will suffer the full brunt of pressure and abusive maneuvers from distributors and manufacturers, who will seek to drive purchase prices down consumer benefit. Farmers do not want to act as a shock absorber in the fight against inflation.
Multiplication of standards
There was a time when Europe and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) protected farmers from global markets with regulatory mechanisms and protections. These protections were shattered in the 1990s, with the liberalization and opening to all winds of the community market.
Since that date, French and European agriculture has suffered constant attacks from producing countries with low labor costs and lower prices from an environmental point of view. CETA treaties [accord de libre-échange entre l’Union européenne et le Canada] and Mercosur [Brésil, Argentine, Uruguay et Paraguay] are emblematic of this disoriented Europe, which exacerbates competition and social and environmental dumping in terms of agricultural practices.
To this opening of the common agricultural market to third countries, we must add the multiplication of standards and regulations that farmers must respect under penalty of seeing the aid to which they are entitled withdrawn. Unfair competition on one side and heightened regulatory pressure on the other, farmers are directly experiencing the contradictions of a Europe which no longer knows how to position itself in globalization and is making them pay for it.
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