Outrage has spread across the industry. From farmers to bakers, the whole wheat industry was indignant, Wednesday January 12, at the launch by the Leclerc group of a baguette at 0.29 euros. These professionals denounce a campaign “demagogic and destructive of values”. The day before, Michel-Edouard Leclerc announced that he was blocking the price of the baguette in the group’s stores at 29 euro cents (or even up to 23 cents) for at least four months, in the name of the defense of the purchasing power of the French in an inflationary context.
A declaration of war for the entire wheat sector. Cereals, millers and bakers, as well as the FNSEA, first agricultural union, castigate an advertisement “demagogic” whereas “the prices of cereals, and consequently of flour, are experiencing high prices, that production costs (wages, etc.) are rising sharply and that the average price of the baguette, in France in 2021 according to INSEE, is 0.90 euro “.
This announcement comes at a critical time, when the industries and the government “work to fairly remunerate farmers” and or “the know-how and the quality of the French baguette are in the process of being recognized by Unesco”. “We seek to preserve employment and quality, this comes at a cost: we must pay the actors correctly, those who plant, who harvest, who assemble the grains and make the flour, and those who make the bread. Leclerc is ashamed “Jean-François Loiseau, president of the National Association of French Mining, told AFP.
“Mr. Leclerc will have to explain to us how and how much he pays bakers with a baguette at 29 cents.”
Christiane Lambert, President of the FNSEAto AFP
As for the millers, Jean-François Loiseau wonders “where the Leclerc group buys its flour” and “on which products it will compensate”, while wheat prices have increased by about 30% in one year.
In addition, Leclerc “break the prices” in the particularly tense context of the annual negotiations between producers and distributors, underline the actors of the sector. Michel-Edouard Leclerc did not hide it, Tuesday on BFMTV: “Flour suppliers have often cited the increase in the price of wheat, asking for considerable increases,” defending his choice of baguette, a “flagship product”, “inflation marker”, as it had done for fuel a few months ago.