“The consumer must realize that virtuous food is more expensive”, according to researcher Sébastien Abis

Less than 10 days before the opening of the Agricultural Show in Paris, agricultural unions are received Tuesday by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal. Sébastien Abis, researcher at Iris, who published Wednesday “Do we want to feed the world?”, gives us his analysis of the agricultural crisis.

Sébastien Abis is at the head of the Demeter club, a network and ecosystem in the agricultural and agri-food world, focused on long-term thinking, global issues and intersectoral dynamics. He is also a researcher at Iris (Institute of International and Strategic Relations) and he published a book on Wednesday February 14 with Armand Colin: Do we want to feed the world?

Tuesday February 13, he is Franceinfo’s “eco guest” and comes to comment on the anger of farmers and the crisis affecting Europe more widely.

franceinfo: Is this agricultural crisis in France over, in your opinion? ? Has the government done what is necessary to calm the anger of farmers? ?

Sébastien Abis: This crisis is deep. It is a crisis that has been taking place over time, for several months, even several years. We know that many of the subjects that have been put forward by the various unions in recent weeks are subjects that are fairly well known to those who follow agricultural issues. And it’s true that this is part of a context where there was a desire to hit a little hard, perhaps in view of the Agricultural Show. Then because there are also the European elections in June and agricultural issues are very Europeanized. And in France, there was also a change of government team. So several factors came together to possibly express themselves.

What questions are raised?

There are three main points, but I think it should be summed up like this. There is a demand for mutual trust. A lot is being asked of the agricultural world today and farmers are responding “Yes” on condition of giving them the means, the equipment and not changing the orientations and decisions every six months.

“We have an agricultural world which says : ‘But trust us, we will succeed in the missions you assign to us.’

Sébastien Abis

on franceinfo

They need resources and consistency, to have a long time because they are in a long-term job.

And trust?

Yes, confidence. Because there has been a greening of European, and therefore French, agricultural policies for 30 years, and there have been a lot of changes in practices. We have improved performances and we must continue to feed at the same time. And the question that has been commented on a lot in recent weeks is ultimately: consumers, these citizens, these customers, when they ask to produce more and more virtuously but to continue to produce, are they realize that they have an increasingly precise, valuable and at the same time efficient diet? And at the same time, they do not pay more for this food.

They don’t want to pay more for it.

Some can’t, but others refuse to spend money on the food act. Because for years we have also been accustomed to mobilizing our increased purchasing power for other aspects of life. Even more so because we are not food insecure in Europe and France.

Food security is something you address in your book. You say : “Climate action does not take precedence over the goals of eradicating poverty and hunger, just as the opposite would no longer be conceivable. The two must go hand in hand”.

But we have the impression that the European Commission has chosen its side. It waived the obligation for farmers to set aside part of their land fallow. She gave up asking to halve the use of pesticides by 2030 and she gave up setting quantified objectives for agriculture to reduce greenhouse gases. We can clearly see the contradiction…

Is there a contradiction? Or is it a rebalancing? We know that from 2019, the European Commission has bet big on the ecological aspect of agricultural transitions, sometimes forgetting the economic aspects, the societal aspects, the productive aspects. And it’s true that there is such a strategic context that has changed. We are coming out of a major strategic situation in Europe, it is the end of the “thirty glanders”, as I have been explaining for two years. We will have to get back to producing, including in agriculture. And we don’t know with climate change, if we can really produce more. We don’t even know if we will be able to produce as much in the coming years. So in fact, we must remain extremely strong on the productive act, but we must not at all disarm ecological transitions.

“We must be very strong in our collective motivation, all sectors combined, to decarbonize our economies. But we must also intensify the growth of human and economic security, and the well-being of everyone, including farmers.”

Sébastien Abis

on franceinfo

There is another apparent paradox: farmers denounce free trade agreements. In particular, they are asking for what we call mirror measures, that is to say that we import products which meet the same standards as those to which we are subject. Isn’t it a paradox when we see that farmers are the first beneficiaries of the same agreements they denounce?

Obviously, we must remain in an open world, but an open world where interdependencies are today showing signs of nervousness. And so some countries have gained advantages where sometimes we have lost them. Be careful not to throw everything away from the store. Trade is good. What is badly experienced today is that we prevent producers from producing with this or that practice here in Europe, and we continue to import products from places in the world which completely free themselves from these rules. We must distinguish our purchases from the large scale that we will never produce in Europe, from products that we already make.

So they are right to denounce these free trade agreements?

The question is whether we can legitimately continue to put on the table of food distribution, and on the table of consumers, products which do not respect social, human, environmental standards, which we impose on producers who surround in Europe or in France? The question is whether we are aware that the price of European food “made in Europe”, yes, has a higher price than the price of world food.

Watch this interview on video: