After a blank year, the reunion of the largest farm in France was upset by the war in Ukraine, the consequences of which potentially devastating for food worldwide captured the minds of the 58th Salon de l’Agriculture. Reminder of the main issues and highlights to remember from this edition which was unlike any other.
Express visit
“This war will last” and “we have to prepare for it”. From the first minutes, the joy of “reunion” under the sign of which this fair was placed gave way to the solemnity of President Emmanuel Macron, whose brevity of the visit – an hour and a half against the usual minimum of twelve hours – illustrated the urgency: that of rethink French agriculture as European when two major powers in the sector had just entered into a conflict with an uncertain outcome.
“Sovereignty”
The term was mentioned eleven times during the Head of State’s speech and was brandished by everyone, from seed producers to cereal growers. “This war zone, which is an extremely productive zone, is completely at a standstill. 30% of the world’s grain trade takes place in the Black Sea. Today the Black Sea is mined”underlined Éric Thirouin, president of the AGPB (wheat producers).
This is enough to worry pig and poultry farmers, already faced for a year with a boom in raw materials. And all the farmers are afraid of running out of fertilizer given the rank occupied by Russia in this sector.
Field crop producers jumped at the chance to question the new version of the European Common Agricultural Policy (PAC), which according to them is akin to a policy of “decline” : “Europe is forcing us to set aside 4% of the land, this trend must be stopped immediately. We must restore flexibility to farms, to meet all production challenges”they said in a forum.
“Europe has a nurturing responsibility towards its partners”also underlined the Minister of Agriculture Julien Denormandie, who recalled “the terrible drought that is raging in the Mediterranean basin”, especially in Morocco. Many countries in the region have in recent years been highly dependent on Black Sea exports.
Retaliation
As in 2014 during the annexation of Crimea by Russia, the food industry fears new trade retaliation from Moscow, which would close the door to new products. Russia has already recommended that Russian fertilizer producers temporarily suspend their exports, citing the “sabotage” foreign companies hampering the transport of this product, of which the country is one of the main producers.
“We know that Russia delivers 17% of the gas to France, 23% of the oil, and a lot of fertilizer: 70% of the gas is used to make fertilizer and we had a 138% increase in the price last year. fertilizers”, worried Christiane Lambert, president of the FNSEA.
Inflation
The escalation of these costs heavily on farmers’ income, a crucial and sensitive subject for years. The only ray of sunshine at this Agriculture show, the annual trade negotiations resulted in a 3% increase in prices paid to manufacturers, after eight years of deflation on the part of distributors, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. and Food. The merit, according to him, goes in particular to the recent law EGalim2.
Transhumance
The mountain and its model of agropastoralism were in the spotlight of this show, opened under the watchful eye of the muse cow Neige, a robust Abondance cow from Haute-Savoie, and closed on Sunday with a “Béarnaise transhumance” on the Champs -Élysées: 2,022 sheep and 350 artists came to introduce city dwellers to agropastoralism.
The opportunity to share the fight of men and women to maintain this ancestral practice of the migration of cattle to the summer pastures as soon as the fine weather arrives: a walk to the rhythm of the animals which is part of a local economy and the defense of heritage.
Attendance
“We hoped to reach 400,000 visitors, we slightly exceeded 500,000. We are very happy”Jean-Luc Poulain, president of Ceneca, owner of the Salon de l’Agriculture, told AFP.
Attendance is therefore down about 15% from the average of the last five years, around 600,000, but “some salons are -30, -40%” after the pandemic”said Mr. Poulain, relieved, even if these figures are somewhat in the background given the context.