Roundabouts, blockages, anger: many saw in the farmers’ demonstrations a remake of the practices used by the yellow vests. In reality, there is another “déjà vu” which should attract our attention: these are in fact the same mechanisms which almost caused the destruction of our nuclear sector and the renunciation of energy independence for our country, before its resurrection forced a week after Russia invaded Ukraine.
If, under pressure from environmentalists, François Hollande promised in 2012 to reduce the share of nuclear power in the energy mix to 50%, it is under this same influence that the European Union hastened to announce the objective of its Green Deal: reducing the continent’s greenhouse gases by 55%. A round figure full of ambition which does not fail to make a small impact on the 8 p.m. news even if it means putting an entire agricultural sector out of business. Indeed, according to several studies, its application will have serious consequences: drastic drop in agricultural production, from -10% to -15% depending on the sector, drop in farmers’ income, surge in food prices, increase in imports …
Another similarity, the dismantling of the agricultural sector has been backed for years by real work of deconstruction of minds which is reminiscent of that carried out on the nuclear sector. From now on, the farmer is no longer the one who cultivates the land, but the one who kills it. It no longer feeds the planet but poisons it. Again, the same causes produced the same effects. Such speeches contributed to the labor shortage in the nuclear sector and we suffered the concrete consequences when it came to urgently remobilizing the sector from February 2022.
Food is life
Agrobashing has also had deleterious effects on the future of the sector: the number of farmers has been divided by 4 in forty years. Even more worrying, now the average age of farmers is 51.4 years and only 20% of them are under 40 years old. Enough to weaken the future of a sector that is nevertheless highly strategic and a good like no other: food. Because food, like energy, like medicine, is life. Added to this is a crazy accumulation of standards and constraints that are abnormally heavy, time-consuming and even humiliating, with France being one of the most zealous in transposing directives well beyond what the average member state practices.
Result: decommissioning has already started. In twenty years, France has gone from 2nd to 5th place among the world’s exporters of agricultural products. Export market shares have fallen from 11% to less than 5% in ten years. Our country imports nearly 63 billion euros of food, or 2.2 times more than in 2000. Today, on the plates of the French, 1 in 2 chicken comes from abroad, 56% of the meat Sheep consumed in France is of imported origin, as are 28% of vegetable consumption and 71% of fruit consumption. A harmful policy for both farmers’ income and consumers’ income, because we often import what is prohibited from being produced in France or within the European Union. As for French consumers who demand organic, short circuit and criticize junk food, they buy, due to the crisis of purchasing power, the cheapest and therefore the most imported products in supermarkets.
In 2023, Europeans have rediscovered energy sovereignty. The year 2024 requires us to save our food sovereignty: respect for the environment, economic efficiency and social justice. Reducing standards, guaranteeing prices to producers when the products are of quality, demanding reciprocity towards importing countries: the road map is gigantic and requires some backtracking. So firm political decisions. If we don’t do it, the far right will. For the worst.
Jean-François Copé, former minister, mayor (LR) of Meaux
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