OThere has been a lot of talk about food sovereignty lately. The government’s response to farmers’ demands was to shelve regulations on pesticides and carbon taxes, notably the domestic consumption tax on energy products, with the aim of promoting productivist agriculture, supposedly intended to feed France. But what if most of this production actually went to export?
French agriculture and its agri-food industry have continued to conquer world markets, particularly in the areas of wines and spirits, cereals, sugar and dairy products. Our trade has continued to grow and the two import-export curves are parallel: the more we import, the more we export!
In this little game, there are winners and losers. The winners are the productions mentioned, and more particularly wines and spirits, which, alone, in 2022, represented 25% of our exports in value. The losers are meat (sheep, chicken) and fruits and vegetables. It’s difficult to compete with New Zealand for lamb, with Brazil for standard chicken and with Morocco or Spain for fruit and vegetables.
The result is that around a third of our food is imported today: of course tropical products that we cannot produce outside overseas territories, coffee, cocoa, spices, palm or peanut oil , banana or avocado, but also citrus fruits, soya, half of our fruits and vegetables, rice, olive oil, many meats and lots of fish. These important flows are today disrupted by wars, the rising price of energy, which increases transport costs, and increasingly by climate change. Will Morocco or Spain be able to continue exporting fruits and vegetables, when water is starting to run out?
Change direction
Despite a large useful agricultural area reported to its inhabitants (4,300 square meters compared to 1,320 square meters for India or 440 square meters for Egypt, for example) and despite a positive agri-food balance – 10 billion euros in 2022, or 12% of our exports – France is therefore far from being sovereign for its food. We saw this during the Covid-19 crisis, where there was a shortage of sunflower oil, even though France produces the quantity it consumes. The reality is that France does not feed its population well: according to a recent study by Crédoc, 16% of French people do not have enough to eat, or more than 11 million people.
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