“We are hit hard by the crisis. In the fall of 2022, we collectively decided to set production quotas, and to lower our volumes by 20%”, testifies Jérôme Jacob, pig farmer in Quimper (Finistère) and president of the Bretagne Viande Bio (BVB) group, which brings together 24 pig farmers. The hardest part, he says, was refusing to open the circle to a newly converted organic farmer. “We had to tell him that we had to choose between him or the whole group of breeders. By leaving it on the floor, we preserved ourselves “, he adds. Mr. Jacob also explains that a farmer affiliated with BVB was forced to abandon the organic certification.
This example illustrates the acute crisis that organic farming is going through. A situation to be linked to the brutal deceleration of French consumption. If the signs of a slowdown were already perceptible in 2021, they have increased in 2022. “Nearly 600 million euros have evaporated in one year, and the organic market has fallen to 12.076 billion euros”says Laure Verdeau, director of the Agence bio, a public structure responsible for coordinating the organic ecosystem. “Result, the share of organic in the diet of the French has fallen from 6.4% to 6%”she regrets.
According to figures released on Thursday 1er June by Agence bio, the French put fewer products stamped with the white flower on a green background in their baskets when shopping in supermarkets. The decline in sales in supermarkets reached 4.6%. However, the big brands remain the leading organic marketing channel, with 53% of the total.
Downgrading to conventional
Loyal customers of specialty stores like Biocoop or La Vie claire also looked at the expense. They paid 8.6% less in these brands. Other bad news, the share of organic food in catering, already reduced to a bare minimum, has shrunk further, from 2% to 1%. The only positive points, highlighted by the Agence bio in its annual report, are the good performance of direct sales, which increased by 3.9%, and market share gains in collective catering, with an increase by 18%. But this does not make it possible to compensate for the air gap in the market.
This brutal deceleration, particularly noticeable in 2022, after years of double-digit growth, took all organic players on the wrong foot. All sectors, eggs, milk, pork, fruits and vegetables as cereals, are jostled. “We have gone from producing 630 million to 1.3 billion liters of milk in five years”underlines Nathalie Delagnes, breeder in Aveyron with 50 dairy cows and president of the Biolait cooperative, which collects throughout the national territory.
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