The visit was not scheduled on the president's agenda. Emmanuel Macron went on Friday morning to the Livestock Summit in Auvergne. The visit was organized in secret, on the sidelines of his trip to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the regional daily La Montagne , scheduled for Friday night in Clermont-Ferrand, 10 km from the summit. The president arrived just before 9 am at the Salers inter-regional competition, where the best specimens of these cows with their red dress and lyre-shaped horns, which inhabit a large part of the Auvergne mountains, are presented.
The president has tried to respond to the grievances of a whole sector, very much raised on two subjects: the Ceta (the global economic and trade agreement between the European Union and Canada) and the drought. But the dialogue was not always easy. "It's bad Mr. President, it seems to poison people," shouted a breeder, reports our journalist on the spot.
Construction of new slaughterhouses
Emmanuel Macron proposed to the farmers that the State finances the construction of slaughterhouses to escape the grip of the dominant group in the meat sector, accused of keeping prices too low. "There is no inevitability," assured the president. While two MPs The Republic in March, Roland Lescure and Jean-Baptiste Moreau, were caught and expelled from the Summit Thursday by farmers in a tense atmosphere, the president was accompanied by the Minister of Agriculture Didier Guillaume to visit this exhibition gathering some 2,000 livestock and thousands of breeders.
After briefly meeting behind closed doors the main leaders of the cattle industry, he walked the aisles talking to the exhibitors and the public. Called on Ceta, the EU-Canada Free Trade Agreement made responsible by the majority union FNSEA for a large part of the difficulties of the profession, the president returned the ball in the French camp. "The difficulties we have today have nothing to do with Ceta!" he said. "Our problem today is that we do not know how to properly value what we produce." "We will have to invest to help the sector, but it is necessary that producers organize themselves to no longer depend on big buyers," he said, denouncing the decline in the price of grazers (calves) "from 15 to 20 % in July".
"We have to stop with this system" of a single dominant actor
"It's up to us to reorganize, to invest (...), there is no inevitability," hammered the president, who wants "we stop" the French system revolving around a single actor dominant in the world of meat, the group Bigard, which is rain and shine on the price in the most perfect opacity. "There is an actor who buys you the meat at the lowest possible price to make his profitability, we must stop with this system," he said.
Friday night, the head of state must continue his stay in Auvergne by going to the Polydome of Clermont-Ferrand, for the 100 years of the regional newspaper La Montagne . After a speech at 6 pm, he will take part in a question-and-answer session with employees of the press group and business leaders in the region.