IHe denies it, of course, but when he limps into the Point – an ankle twisted in the hole of a sidewalk, “gift from Anne Hidalgo”, he jokes –, we notice the downcast look. On the eve of the opening of the Salon de l’agriculture, Jean-Baptiste Moreau left his breeding in the Creuse to accompany the president, once again, to the inauguration. But we feel that this year, the heart is not really there. Beaten in the legislative elections in June, the former deputy-breeder, elected in the wake of Emmanuel Macron’s victory, lost his scarf… And many illusions. “We have two or three years left. Improving our agriculture is a nice slogan, but it’s useless if it’s already dead,” he breathes, looking gloomy. He believed in it, however.
In 2017, he met the future president at the show at the bend of an alley, on a stand of livestock professionals. Thunderbolt. The leader of En Marche! promises at the time to stop the over-transposition of environmental standards, and convinces the breeder to wear his colors in the legislative elections – this is the blessed era of the “popular” party, “open to the best representatives of civil society”. The agricultural works engineer, never carded, never unionized, teeming with ideas to restructure the agricultural sectors and restore his “dignity” to a disaster-stricken profession, throws himself into politics like a rugby player in the fray. There will be some victories, he acknowledges – like the Egalim laws, designed to rebalance the balance of power between producers and distributors. But also a lot of failures. And while the pension reform occupies almost all of the media time, he fears that the deep crisis that the “Farm France” is going through is once again underestimated.
In 2017, Emmanuel Macron promised to “take up the challenge of food sovereignty” of the country. Five years later, production has collapsed, and without sales of wines and spirits, the agricultural trade balance would sink into the red: France does not know how to feed itself, and has never been so dependent on outdoors for food. Jean-Baptiste Moreau is the guest of the political interview of the Point.
Point : In May 2022, the Ministry of Agriculture also became that of Food Sovereignty. Isn’t this change of name paradoxical, while French production is collapsing, and it’s not clear what policy is being conducted to redress the bar?
Jean-Baptiste Moreau: The situation, it is true, is increasingly critical. And if the Egalim laws have made it possible to put in place mechanisms to restore farmers’ incomes, it is clear that today the problems are not just economic. If the incomes of breeders, for example, are holding up, it is because production has collapsed so much over the past ten years that demand is greater than supply! The herd continues to shrink. We are already no longer able to ensure minimum volumes to run certain slaughterhouses, and in two or three years, there will be a haemorrhage, a large number of establishments will close. It’s a vicious circle: the profession no longer attracts. The Covid crisis has had the effect of reviving local consumption, but the societal wave which aims to live better and work less has not spared the agricultural world. We have more and more farmers who are tired of working nights, weekends, and who no longer want to have animals. If we don’t find solutions to be attractive, French production will continue to collapse.
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The word sovereignty no longer has any meaning today, since we are dependent for most productions, and it is collapsing everywhere! We import half of our fruits and vegetables, half of our poultry (against only 13% in 2000!), even the production of major crops is plummeting. Sugar beet has been in the news recently, but we risk losing the entire sector! The public authorities will financially compensate for a year or two the farmers who will have lost their production, but the sugar factories will not be able to last long with a volume reduced by 50% and partial unemployment. A number will close…
How did we arrive at such a discrepancy between the speeches of politicians, who swear only by sovereignty, normative sobriety, stopping overtranspositions… and the reality on the ground?
For fruits and vegetables, whose collapse is largely due to the ban on phytosanitary products which are still authorized everywhere else, the damage is done. And the government has not reversed this trend, which consists of superimposing the standards enacted within the framework of the European Union! For years, products have been banned in France under pressure from certain environmentalist lobbies, without consideration for scientific data. However, they remain authorized in Europe, and that is where the real competition is today. In a common market, it is unthinkable to have different rules of the game, it is no longer possible. The profession focuses on extra-European competition and international treaties such as Ceta, because it sells better in the media… But the competition is first and foremost intra-European! We import our beef from Germany! Our fruits and vegetables are produced in Spain with cheap, even undeclared, labor and with products that France has completely banned.
The Minister of Agriculture explains that we cannot go back, in the name of the principle of “environmental non-regressivity”.
Including this principle in the Constitution was a real bullshit, and we are going into the wall. We won’t get by without harmonizing our standards with those of the rest of the European Union. What we did in one direction by amending the Constitution, we can do in the other direction, by amending it again. It will take political courage, but I see no other solution. Because it is not possible to leave Europe: it would be the certain death of our agriculture.
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That is the question… But even the protection rules included in free trade agreements are not respected! We are content to control the pesticide residues of the goods at the port of arrival. But it is necessary to go to the countries of origin, to have real services of the DGCCRF type, which would observe the production methods on site! These mirror clauses are a mirror… larks! Moreover, even if they were adopted, they would not solve the problems of intra-European competition, and the differential in competitiveness between Europeans. And that can only be solved by harmonizing standards.
Emmanuel Macron thought, in 2017, that the “upscaling” of our agriculture would open the doors to markets with high added value. It’s a fail ?
Yes and no… Our agriculture has no choice but to differentiate itself, because our agricultural model is already economically dead today: our farms with an average of 118 cattle are an aberration. They don’t exist anywhere else in the world! And it is illusory to be able to compete with the costs of much larger farms, including in Northern Germany, Romania, Poland… Industrial agriculture does not exist in France. Even our pigsties are tiny compared to what is practiced in Spain! Only moving upmarket allows us, in this context, to be competitive. But on the other hand, the consumer is king, and no matter what he says, he goes for the low prices at the supermarket. If we don’t produce what he wants to find, we will import it. In Poland or Romania, the lands of the former kolkhozes have been dismantled and sold, often, to foreign capital, such as Saudi Arabia, in particular. These behemoths are spread over tens of thousands of hectares, which make industrial agriculture. What does not exist in France exists in Eastern Europe.
What outcomes do you see?
The first step is to obtain protection and real harmonization of standards at European level. We did not do this during the previous five-year term, it is vital today. Waiting only brings us closer to the time when it will be too late to act, because we will have killed our lines. Then, if the problems of cost-competitiveness cannot be solved by enlarging our structures, because society does not want this, we can do so through technological innovation. Robotization, the use of new phytosanitary products that are more respectful of the environment, new plant biotechnologies… We have to put the package into research and innovation.
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They take up the newspeak of the European Commission, which is confusingly naive. What is this new model? A model where we produce less, when we are already dependent? It is never defined! If it’s to do permaculture on 500 m2, it’s useless, it’s food self-sufficiency that can feed a family, the neighbors… But not France. The opposition between organic farming and other production methods is just as dangerous. We are told that this will create jobs. But who do we employ? Young people don’t want to go to work in the fields, outside, in the rain. It’s like that. I don’t know of any magic way to force them to do so.
France has lost 100,000 farms over the past ten years, and half of farm managers are now over 55 years old. The renewal of generations is a colossal, short-term challenge… Do you feel that the authorities are aware of this?
Not enough. Today, agriculture is already short of manpower. The turnover is not high enough in many sectors to be able to recruit. Our model of family farming is also a global aberration, which does not exist anywhere else! We must create tools for carrying land and capital, so that the young person who settles is not in debt for 45 years, and that he finishes repaying the purchase of his farm when he retires! Several schemes can be studied, such as public-private partnerships… this takes a little courage, but we will have to find a way to generate income that allows hiring employees to lighten the workload. Operators must also be able to associate more easily, to pool their equipment and their work. Otherwise, young people will no longer come.
Is this what you expect from the next agricultural orientation law?
Absolutely. It is under discussion in the territories. Emmanuel Macron is aware of the urgency, I think. In five years, if we do not have a massive increase in the number of agricultural workers, I do not see how we can stop the spiral of the fall of French food sovereignty. Farmers need vision, and planning. What solutions for land? Are we heading towards detransposition? Spain is a net exporter. But other countries, such as England, have chosen to abandon their agriculture and rely on imports. Denmark or the Netherlands are on the same trend. But current geopolitical uncertainties show that food is one country’s best means of exerting pressure on another. When a population is hungry, no regime can hold out, be it a dictatorship or a democracy.