From market gardeners to large retailers, Emmanuel Macron praised the "France farm" on Wednesday during a trip to Finistère, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis. "Thank you to her. She held out, we can be proud of it" declared the president who started his visit of the "second lines" by going to a large tomato farm, in the town of Cléder.
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"Everyone played the game in a great way"
"I hope that our fellow citizens will be reconciled with this fine job which is that of feeding the nation", insisted the president with operators and employees, in allusion to "agri-bashing" targeting part of the profession these last months. "Everyone played the game in a great way, with bosses and courageous employees who went to work, sometimes they were afraid but they came, to continue to feed the country."
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"We must restore meaning to what we do collectively"
For their part, the operators Thierry and Jean-Marc Roué indicated that "the Covid crisis has had no impact on [their] market so far", while pleading for an enhancement of production [ agricultural] French. "The citizen, when he is a consumer, must not forget to be a citizen. We must ask the question, where does what comes from on the plate," replied the Head of State.
"I am neither a nationalist nor a protectionist, but if we want to regain control of our lives, we have to give meaning to what we do collectively. This does not mean closing the borders, but we have sometimes accepted incoherent things in the name of accelerated globalization, "added Emmanuel Macron who, since the start of the crisis, has emphasized the need to find a more sovereign France and Europe.
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The importance of supermarkets in times of containment
After the greenhouses, Emmanuel Macron went into the aisles of a supermarket, a Super-U located in Saint-Paul-de-Léon, still in Finistère. He praised the "formidable sense of duty" of employees before the conversation started on the fear of being contaminated at work, and the actions and measures put in place to avoid this. Masks, gloves, visors, plexiglass windows at checkouts ... the new organization of the store was detailed to the Head of State in aisles almost devoid of customers.
The president also stressed the importance of being present for the French confined, but also that the time had not come to release the pressure of confinement. "There are a lot of uncertainties, it's a virus that we understand and know very little about, so you have to put your bearings and have common sense, as you had on the ground" said Emmanuel Macron to employees. "We must reassure the most worried, the most fragile."
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A "slow" and "maybe differentiated" after May 11
As for after May 11, the president described it as "a second stage, of which we do not know how long it will last, which will be progressive, concerted, sometimes slow, perhaps differentiated according to the sectors of activity or according to the regions more or less impacted ". He also urged caution not to "take two steps back": "It is an unprecedented effort that has been asked of the Nation, it should not be called into question by a too hasty return, or a willingness to say that all of this is behind us. "