Samuel Vandaele, president of the Young Farmers, fears this Friday evening on franceinfo a “price boom” raw materials with the war in Ukraine, particularly for the supply of wheat.
franceinfo: What are farmers’ fears today?
Samuel Vandaele: There are two phenomena at the moment. First, we are coming to the end of the trade negotiations, which take place every year and must be concluded by March 1. This is where the price paid to farmers for all of our products will be defined for all the national brands. Secondly, there is the conflict between Ukraine and Russia which raises a lot of doubts, because all of our charges, including on raw materials, but also on products linked to gas and oil, risk ‘to augment. These two phenomena combine and create a lot of tension and fear in the agricultural community. It is this set of raw materials which is increasing enormously and therefore which could weaken all of our French breeding.
Gas prices also worry you: why?
It worries us for several reasons, for the heating of a certain number of livestock buildings, but also because the gas is used in the manufacture of many inputs such as fertilizers and others, which have already been multiplied [ndlr : en terme de prix] by three in six months. There are no direct fears for the moment on the shortage of raw materials. It is rather the surge in purchase prices that raise fears of a major crisis.
What can Macron do to calm the concern of the agricultural world?
It’s difficult to answer, it’s not only linked to France. We could see a certain number of measures blocking a certain number of prices, but it is very complicated to put in place. Moreover, it does not only concern farmers: gas and oil concern all of our fellow citizens and our French industry. What we expect is a position rather from Europe to try to calm, soothe tensions. But it’s very complicated, we also see the strength of Russia via Putin. We hope it can calm down. The President of the Republic must inaugurate the Salon de l’Agriculture on Saturday morning. He said he would come that his visit would certainly be very shortened, and that the Prime Minister would take over because in a state of war he could not remain available at the Agricultural Show all day.
Should large retailers make efforts for the prices paid to farmers, faced with the risks of war in Ukraine?
The Egalim law2 sets up contracts to fix the price of raw materials via our production costs. These may vary over time following the rise in raw materials. We are waiting for these prices to be clearly fixed, for these contracts to be correctly drawn up. We are talking about mass distribution, but there is also the intermediate level, the manufacturers who must also play the game of putting value back on products and paying producers correctly. There are strong concerns. We have places where we feel that things are going quite well, others a little less. Everything is very confidential because it happens in negotiation boxes behind closed doors. We can see that it is very complicated because the large distribution wants to preserve the purchasing power of the French, the industrialists also have a certain number of increases with the costs of energy.
We are still afraid that agriculture and farmers are the adjustment variable. It is still about our food sovereignty. We talked about it a lot during the Covid. Our goal is to keep as many farmers as possible on the territory to avoid having factory farms.