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Faced with an unprecedented disaffection of consumers sorting out their expenses in the midst of an inflationary crisis, organic farmers and industrialists are annoyed to see the government remain insensitive to their cries for help, especially financial ones.
From the majority union FNSEA to the Confédération paysanne, from the union of agricultural cooperatives to the federation of specialized industrialists, warning messages are piling up while the Agricultural Show is in full swing.
After ten years of double-digit growth, the organic market is being hit by inflation, with consumers falling back on cheaper products. Last year, organic supermarket sales fell 7.4% year-on-year, according to panelist NielsenIQ.
“France lets the organic sectors sink into the crisis without reacting”deplore in a joint press release organizations of organic producers and industrialists. “No response has been given to us by the government”, regrets the Confédération paysanne.
In a rare movement of mood on this subject, the FNSEA and Young Farmers unions, the Chambers of Agriculture and the Agricultural Cooperation judge that the response of the Ministry of Agriculture “at this stage of the discussions is not satisfactory”.
For these four organisations, short-term aid to producers “is essential to overcome the crisis”.
“The 60,000 farms [sur moins de 390.000] engaged in organic today deserve a support to the height with regard to the crisis crossed”, they defend.
They also deem unrealistic the official objective of reaching 18% of the French useful agricultural area in organic by 2027, against 10.3% in 2021. And this while conversions are stopped for lack of outlets and that farmers are encouraged by manufacturers to switch back to conventional production.
“The deconversion [du bio vers le conventionnel]it’s the worst thing that can happen to us”, Agriculture Minister Marc Fesneau told reporters on Wednesday.
“We are trying to see how we can accompany this moment”he sketched, recalling that orders from canteens should feed demand.
Objectives had been set for collective catering, supposed to introduce on January 1, 2022 at least 20% organic products in its food purchases. “We are at 6”% today, said the minister.
NO to diets, YES to WW!
Organic, a market in sharp decline
At the previous Agricultural Show, as well as last December, the ministry had announced envelopes to help fund communication campaigns in favor of organic.
But it is direct aid to producers that is demanded.
The decline in organic production, hitherto growing to meet demand, has begun, particularly for products of animal origin.
In French poultry houses, the number of organic chickens fell by a quarter between 2021 and 2022. All production methods combined, the decline is much more modest (-4.2% over one year) in a general context of reduction in production due to avian flu, according to the poultry interprofession Anvol.
“For four, five years, the whole sector has been moving upmarket,” noted this week at a press conference Jean-Michel Schaeffer, president of Anvol and the French Poultry Confederation (CFA), a specialized section of the union. agricultural majority FNSEA. “Have we reached a breaking point?” he wondered.
An organic chicken is sold at around three times the price of a standard chicken, due to the use of breeds that grow more slowly, are fewer in number, can evolve in the open air and are fed exclusively with food. organic.
As production exceeds demand, manufacturers are forced to sell products at conventional prices paid to farmers at organic prices.
The milk leader Lactalis indicated that it had to “downgrade” more than 40% of the milk collected from organic breeders under contract with him, a level “never known before”.
Consumers, observes Lactalis, “are moving away from organic products in favor of other products and are also being tempted by competing local or pasture-based alternative offers”.