Anger of farmers: why agricultural cooperatives are singled out

Tiphaine Dubuard, edited by Gauthier Delomez / Photo credits: JUSTINE BONNERY / HANS LUCAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP 06:31, February 25, 2024

You probably know Candia dairy products, Aucy preserves, or Brossard cakes.

What you probably don't know is that they are all run by agricultural cooperatives.

These collaborative structures were initially created by farmers to add value to their raw materials.

But they are now being singled out by the producers themselves, who accuse them of copying the industrial model.

A figure is put forward: 85% of the agricultural production of cooperatives is concentrated in 3% of them.

This observation brings to mind the giants of the food industry.

At the head are behemoths like Agrial or Invivo which generate several billion euros in turnover each year.

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A race to gigantism

It is this race for gigantism that pushes them to treat their members as simple suppliers, according to Xavier Hollandts, author of the book

.

“When you are a member of a cooperative, you have to supply, in general, almost exclusively to the cooperative, and you no longer have the capacity to obtain a higher or different price with another economic actor,” explains -he at the microphone of Europe 1.

This treatment is all the more difficult for farmers to live with as most of them are dependent on these structures.

“The bigger the structures get, the less they pay farmers correctly,” notes Xavier Hollandts.

“This shows how big a gap there is between the largest cooperatives and their members. We are just a number, we are not treated better than an average subcontractor or supplier,” he says. .

Today, three out of four farmers belong to an agricultural cooperative.