The Head of State expressed, on Saturday February 24 at the Agricultural Show, the desire to be able to “achieve” on “floor prices which will make it possible to protect agricultural income”, as part of the preparation of a new law governing relations between food stakeholders. Objective: to ensure decent incomes for farmers, and to reverse the balance of power with manufacturers and distributors during negotiations. This would therefore involve prohibiting the sale of a commodity below a price sufficient to ensure the farmer’s remuneration.
“The objective that I set for the work which was launched by the Prime Minister and his ministers, and in particular the parliamentary work, is that we can truly achieve these floor prices which will make it possible to protect agricultural income and “not to give in to all the most predatory practices which today are sacrificing our farmers and their income”, declared Emmanuel Macron at the end of an interview with the leaders of the main agricultural unions, at the start of the day.
The “floor price” or “minimum price” is a price below which the manufacturer or distributor cannot fall when purchasing an agricultural raw material, such as milk. This “floor price” would be based on an agricultural production cost indicator, on which each sector (poultry, milk, beef, etc.) would have to agree. This is, according to the unions, a new commitment which would go beyond the “Egalim” legislative framework supposed to guarantee the remuneration of producers, increased several times since 2018.
Something promised, something due? On February 21, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced plans “by the summer” to put in place a new law to improve farmers’ remuneration. “We are going to the end of the logic. We will put in place a floor price per sector so that work pays and farmers are not forced to sell below the average production cost of the sector”, stressed the AFP of executive advisors.
Unions applaud
This proposal for a minimum price has been at the heart of professionals’ demands for several weeks. “Putting the word out on the concept of floor prices is already a small revolution,” welcomed the spokesperson for the Peasant Confederation, Laurence Marandola, to AFP. “Afterwards, this floor price will be constructed by sector. So it will be torn between producers and downstream. We will be careful,” she added. The union, classified on the left in the political landscape, wants to include in this method of calculation the costs of production, the remuneration of the farmer, as well as the financing of their social protection.
For its part, Modef, the Movement for the Defense of Family Farmers, is also campaigning for floor prices in agriculture. “The correct remuneration of peasant work allowing a decent living through minimum prices guaranteed by the State is an issue of social progress,” believes the union created in 1959.
And for mass distribution? Same story. Example with the president of Lidl, Michel Biero, who suggested “a guaranteed minimum price for milk, for pork, for beef” in order to “protect the agricultural world”. Near L’Express, at the end of January 29, he insisted on pushing for tripartite contracts between farmers, manufacturers and distributors or establishing a minimum price. “Today, Lidl has 5,000 breeders who are involved in this type of contract. It works wonderfully well and it’s childishly simple. But I only have 20% of my business around beef, pork and milk which enters into this scheme. Why? Because the manufacturers do not want to go any further.”
Backpedaling?
La France insoumise welcomed Emmanuel Macron’s announcements, seeing proof that “the fight pays”, three months after having tabled a bill to regulate the purchase price of agricultural raw materials from producers. The text was rejected by 168 votes to 162, in particular because of the Macronist majority, while its various articles had been approved individually. “Last November, with my parliamentary group and my comrade Aurélie Trouvé, I presented a bill establishing floor prices for farmers. It was 6 votes short of voting for it, the Macronists and LR having done everything to oppose it”, recalled the deputy for Marseille (LFI), Manuel Bompard, on X.
At the time, the Minister Delegate in charge of Business, Tourism and Consumption, Olivia Grégoire, denounced measures reminiscent of “Cuba or the Soviet Union, with the successes we know of them”. Guest on Franceinfo on January 27, the Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau, was not very enthusiastic about the idea: “It’s not that simple […]. If I put a kilo of tomatoes at 10 euros in France to pay the farmers and we have, on arrival, tomatoes at 3 euros, what do you think will happen? We need prices to rise, including at the national level.”
However, in March 2021, the former Minister of Agriculture Julien de Normandie was already talking about this solution, after the submission of a report written by the former boss of Système U, Serge Papin, which highlighted that the EGalim law of 2018 failed to keep its promises and did not go far enough.
For the right, a “very bad idea”
On the side of the FNSEA, the leading agricultural union, the position on “floor prices” appears more mixed. Above all, it requires “the full and complete application of the Egalim laws and their state of mind by constructing the price forward”, namely building it from the producer price, explain our colleagues from Franceinfo. A union source questions the legality of a “floor price” which amounts to a guaranteed minimum price.
The right, for its part, protests against “this very bad idea”. The senator from Vendée (LR) Bruno Retailleau says, on X, he detects two traps: “It will be a universal agricultural minimum income, a socialist idea! […] the floor price will become a market price in Egalim. In the diversity of regions and farms, the gaps will widen. We walk on the head !”
Still on the same social network, Christian Gollier, director of Toulouse School of Economics, also displays his reluctance: “The floor price is above all a boon for large farmers, especially if it is estimated at the average cost of small farms. Ineffective productivist policy par excellence. How can the left support that?”