Farmers set up a farm drive in the center of Bordeaux

• The farm drive of the Gironde chamber of agriculture saw its orders multiply by five in one week.
• To cope, he opened with the Bordeaux city hall, a withdrawal point on the Place des Quinconces, only during the confinement period.
• With the coronavirus crisis and the closure of restaurants, all producers in the Girondins have to face the problem of the flow of goods.

In an exceptional situation, exceptional device. The farm drive of the Gironde chamber of agriculture will open, during the confinement period, a new withdrawal point, directly on the Place des Quinconces in Bordeaux. The Chamber of Agriculture has obtained the agreement of the city, which will support it in this process, by installing a specific circulation and barrier for the withdrawal of products, which will be deposited directly in the trunk of customers' cars, to limit contact.

It must be said that for two weeks, the farmer's drive has recorded record orders, since these have been multiplied by five. “We registered 600 orders last week, explains Mathilde Fisse, coordinator of the Drive farmer, and we block them otherwise we could reach 1,000… But we have reached our limits, in terms of staff and logistics. "

No competition between producers

Drive farmer is an online store created in 2012 by the Gironde chamber of agriculture, to bring farmers and consumers together, without intermediaries. We place an order before midnight Wednesday, to collect meat, vegetables or cheese, the following Friday between 1.30 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. The collection points are located in Lormont, Bordeaux, Eysines (and usually Gradignan, exceptionally closed because it is housed in a school establishment). For this new collection point at Quinconces, the order deadline remains Wednesday midnight.

The Gironde farmer's drive currently has around fifty producers. And it is not intended to accommodate more, the principle being not to compete with professionals between them.

"Our producers are left with tons of products on their hands"

However, the 600 to 700 producers in the Girondins are currently looking for new distribution channels. "It's disarray in the profession, loose Louis Fleury, director of the Promotion and Agritourism service at the chamber of agriculture. With the closure of restaurants, collective catering, and a large part of the markets, our producers are left with tons of products on their hands. At the same time, consumer demand for access to local products has never been stronger.

Large-scale distribution thus finds itself in a quasi-monopoly position. "We are in contact with large groups and hypermarket managers, so that they rely on local products," says Louis Fleury. Another lever for selling goods: the Amap (Association for the maintenance of peasant agriculture) and other structures for direct sales to consumers. Finally, the Chamber of Agriculture now sells 6 tonnes of fresh produce per week to the Food Bank.

At the same time, she is working on setting up a new online platform, which should be ready by the end of this week. It should make it possible to group together all consumer requests, with producers, and offer a mix between home delivery, and a collection point, and for "multi-products." "

After the asparagus and strawberries, concerns about the lamb and oysters

Among the products that are currently the most "in tension" are asparagus and strawberries. "We can no longer sell these products, the market is broken, even if we do everything to restart the machine," says Louis Fleury. The Chamber of Agriculture is also worried about the lamb: the peak in sales comes at the time of the Easter celebrations, “but we are well aware that the traditional family reunions of April will not take place. Another local product that is causing concern: oysters. "People obviously do not go to the Arcachon basin any more, and it is a product which is usually very present on the markets of the department ..." According to the prefecture, there are only 51 open markets in Gironde.

So far, @ PrefAquitaine33 has authorized 51 exemptions for open markets in Gironde. The figure should not change much according to the prefect.

It remains to be seen whether this change in consumption habits will allow producers to rebound after the crisis. "There, we are in an emergency, admits Louis Fleury, but we are also trying to anticipate the release from confinement. Certainly we will fall back to 80% in our consumption habits, but perhaps the movement around local consumption, which was already started before the crisis, will be amplified. People are realizing that it is the farmers who feed them, and that they can offer them quality products with exemplary traceability. "

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• Coronavirus
• Aquitaine
• Bordeaux
• Covid 19
• Containment
• Agriculture
• Consumption