Paris (AFP)
The first anniversary of the Food Act leaves a bitter taste to farmers and associations who expected a lot, while the supermarket refers to a positive balance sheet and asks to wait until the end of the trial period to judge.
Promulgated in early November 2018, the law resulting from the General States of Food (Egalim) is supposed to protect producers, aiming for a better distribution of value between the various links in the food chain, from producers to distributors to processors .
The law was supposed to make it possible to get out of an untenable domino effect: the price war between the four major retailers in France is pushing them to demand ever lower rates from their agri-food suppliers, who themselves buy in their turn, as cheap as possible the agricultural raw material from the peasants at the end of the chain, who sell at a loss and can not live from their work.
A year after its promulgation, the balance sheet that a collective of environmental associations, consumers and rural and rural solidarity, is severe: the balance of power "from an economic point of view" remains "still unfavorable to farmers for the benefit of processing and large-scale distribution ".
- "Blank check", "check in wood" -
On the subject of animal welfare, "the text has made very little change in practices". As for the measures concerning the "safe and healthy" food, they are insufficient, consider the associations regrouped within a "Platform citizen for a transition agriculture and food".
"The new provisions (prohibition of sales at a loss in supermarkets on consumer goods via a 10% increase in the resale threshold at a loss (SRP), and strict supervision of promotions, Ed) have generated an increase in prices "practiced by large retailers to consumers, without the desired positive effects on the income of farmers are guaranteed," they point out.
The Confédération paysanne and the UFC-Que Choisir thus qualify the system of the SRP as a "blank check of 1.6 billion euros for large retailers" and a "wooden check for farmers".
The SRP "has proven not only its inefficiency in the remuneration of producers, but worse, it lowers the prices of fruits and vegetables and fatens the mass distribution," says Pascal Beteille, president of the Rural Coordination Lot-et-Garonne. "We must not wait another year to remove this measure!", He adds.
- "the supermarket did not play the game" -
"The mass distribution, the agricultural unions had agreed for a better distribution of the value and today after a year, this better distribution of the value did not take place" (... ) because "the supermarket did not play the game," Wednesday accused the Minister of Agriculture, Didier Guillaume.
"The Minister denigrates in a caricatural and derogatory way the role of distribution in the implementation of Egalim," said the general delegate of the Federation of Commerce and Distribution (FCD) Jacques Creyssel.
The signs are "mobilized for the application of this law" and "the first assessments shared with the public authorities are rather positive," he says.
In addition, during the 2018 annual trade negotiations between producers and distributors, "a part of this law had not yet been implemented due to the late publication of the ordinances. next year, "he argues.
French agri-food SMEs that supply mass retailers also consider themselves collateral victims of this law, as their growth rate in sales in large and medium-sized areas has been divided by three and their number of new references has fallen on the shelves, according to the Federation of Enterprises of France (FEEF).
According to the firm Nielsen, since the entry into force of the law, "the weight of sales under promotion of SMEs (-1.9 points, at 19.4%) is much smaller than for other stakeholders (- 0.4 point to 24.4% for large groups) ".
© 2019 AFP