This plan is in addition to the emergency aid of 10 million euros announced at the 2023 Agricultural Show.
The support plan for organic production will be endowed with 60 million euros, learned franceinfo from the Ministry of Agriculture. This device is formalized Wednesday, May 17 by Marc Fesneau, during a trip to the Oise. As for the modalities to benefit from it, they will be fixed with the professionals, explains the entourage of the minister.
>> Agricultural fair: why the organic sector is in the midst of a growth crisis
This plan is in addition to the emergency aid of 10 million euros announced at the last Agricultural Show. Such an amount, “it’s absolutely contemptuous, anecdotal”, reacted the spokesperson for the Confédération paysanne, Nicolas Girod, while at the same time the government announced aid of 270 million for pork producers, 300 million for winegrowers who were victims of frost, and even aid capped for beet growers, victims of beet yellows. In mid-April, Arnaud Rousseau, the president of the FNSEA, the majority agricultural union, had for his part demanded on franceinfo a “massive plane”of “50 to 100 million euros”.
A 7% drop in sales
The organic farming sector is facing an unprecedented crisis. In 2022, sales of organic products fell by more than 7% in supermarkets, according to NielsenIQ, and after years of double-digit growth, supply now exceeds demand. And with the inflation of food prices, consumers had to make choices and turned away from the most expensive products. What discourage conversions to organic, or even worse: that some organic farmers return to conventional.
To avoid such a scenario, the government does not rule out resuscitating in another form the maintenance aid abolished in 2017, by drawing on the fund intended to help farmers switch to organic. France has provided, within the framework of the common agricultural policy (CAP), 340 million euros per year to switch to organic. In the previous CAP, the amount was only 250 million. The goal remains to go from 10% of organic agricultural area today to 18% in 2027. If there is money left in this envelope of 340 million euros by the end of the year, it it is possible that it will be paid to organic operators in difficulty, we explain to the ministry, to avoid deconvention and a backtracking.