Pascal Deshayes, President of the Coordination Rurale de Meurthe-et-Moselle, explains the reasons behind French farmers’ bloodbath: drought, floods, crop failures, epizootic diseases, unfair competition from foreign producers, and insane middlemen’s margins. “60% of farms have no cash flow”, he says. Interview.
Coordination Rurale has been leading actions in the Bouches-du-Rhône region since Thursday. Why this new revolt in the farming world?
Coordination Rurale was already the instigator of the 2023 demonstrations that began in the south-west of France. But we’ve had nothing but blah-blah from successive governments, Attal or Barnier. Nothing concrete has been done for agriculture, apart from a few small measures.
Today, farmers are at the end of their tether. They’ve just endured two execrable years in a row: last year’s drought, and this very wet year: we had 1650 mm in a short space of time, without being able to sow properly, and harvests have been very poor all over France. No region was separated. As a result, 60% of farms have no cash flow. Add to this the catastrophic prices. Prices had risen slightly at the time of the war in Ukraine. But inputs (fertilizers, plant protection products, animal feed, etc.) have doubled or even tripled.
And Mercosur isn’t going to help…
I don’t want to denigrate, but it’s the FNSEA, which has been co-managing for 40 years, that has led us into the wall. It’s the FNSEA that has endorsed this whole system. In fact, in 1992, the Coordination was born out of a pact created and backed by the FNSEA. The FNSEA’s then president, Henri De Benoist, demanded that we lower our prices to world levels so that we could export. However, FNSEA dissidents understood that it was not possible to live on state subsidies. Today, we’re on a drip-feed of government and European subsidies. Agriculture is managed by an out-of-touch administration. This has to change. What we want are remunerative prices.
Why don’t you want Mercosur?
If you want to sell Airbus or cars, the variant is always agriculture, it’s always against foodstuffs. Mercosur will bring 99,000 tonnes of meat to France. Good cuts, at low prices, but with no health guarantee. While French and European livestock farmers have to meet draconian standards, in Chile, Argentina and Brazil, cattle are raised with implants in their ears to increase production.
We are calling for a mirror clause. In other words, goods entering France must meet the same standards as those imposed on us.
And nobody cares about consumers’ health?
During the Covid, everyone at well, sourcing their food from short distribution channels. Today, many French people are strangled by purchasing power and buy first-price products. In other words, imported meat. We know that meat consumption in France has fallen over the last five years. Today, it is stabilizing. French production is down 7%. Which means 7% more imports. All the small and medium-sized livestock and dairy farms in mountain areas are affected. They will disappear.
There’s Mercosur, but also Ukraine
Yes, this is also one of our big concerns. Europe is planning to integrate Ukraine into the EU, which represents 18 million hectares of farmland. As much as France. We’re down to 400,000 farmers. Europe, with its famous standards and its Green Deal, no longer wants French farmers. They’re going to produce in Ukraine, where there’s enormous potential, with an average of 30 to 40 quintals and a potential of 80 quintals if we work normally. Obviously, this competition worries us.
With the Russian-Ukrainian war, we imported millions of tons of wheat at €130, delivered to French silos. The Poles, the first to be affected, have emptied hundreds of trucks at the border.
There’s Ukrainian wheat, but also chickens…
During the latest demonstrations, Coordination Rurale was informed that customs had intercepted a truck in Lesménils (54) with 25 tons of chicken frozen for two years! So it’s the French agri-food industry that’s been buying up this crap to make nuggets, which are then resold at huge margins. It’s not supermarkets that make huge margins on food, it’s the middlemen between producers and distributors.
Multinational food companies?
For me, that’s where it all happens. When you see a group like Lactalis putting farmers out of business by saying “we’ve got enough milk”. It’s unacceptable. Lactalis is one of France’s biggest multinationals.
When you have a majority union that has been co-managing for 40 years with all the governments and that endorses all this, it’s unacceptable. We denounce it at Rural Coordination. We learned on September 23, 2023 that it was Arnaud Rousseau, president of the FNSEA, who had secretly negotiated with Bruno Le Maire (then Minister of the Economy) to increase GNR (non-road diesel) taxes over 4 years to 2 euros, in return for the incorporation of diester (biodiesel) to decarbonize agriculture. Except that the only diester manufacturer in France is the Avril group, whose chairman is none other than FNSEA president Arnaud Rousseau. With 78 plants in 31 countries worldwide!
What are your next actions?
We don’t want to demonstrate just to annoy the same people over and over again. But when we’re up against the wall, as we are today, our anger explodes. Especially as we’re currently facing two major problems. These are the epizootic diseases, bluetongue, which is causing major damage to livestock, and avian flu, particularly in the south-west. When you add it all up, it’s easy to understand why people are at their wits’ end. They have nothing left to lose. We’re afraid they’re going to break everything.
Farmers more controlled than drug dealers!
FNSEA boss at the helm of a multinational food company