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Post by lindalovely on Feb 5, 2024 16:15:51 GMT 1
They don't just do the chicken farm Mysty. Usually there are other activities (honey, fois gras, a bit of cereal etc), but yes..it doesn't really add up financially. So when they say if we go, so does your food supply, in a sense they are right. I don't understand why any of them sign up to those schemes though..
I think there is too much wine grown..Probably what will happen is some will compete in the luxury field, some will fold and some will get taken over by the big cooperatives. In a way it has already happened around this way. Some of the vineyards have been bought out by South Africans, who bring a very different wine culture. The marketing is a problem. The growers of St Emilion were complaining that no one would buy their wine. St Emilion wine is one of the most well known wines in the world, so if you can't flog that then you are doing something wrong frankly. I mean the Italian growers managed to convince the entire world that their sh*t sparkling prosecco was better than champagne! (Vouvray far more palatable than either!)
Our local friendly farmer who has cows and works single handed, will probably just sell his land to one of the other local farmers. There are two that are expanding and buying more land. He produces milk for the cheese factory and some cereal, but if the cheese factory goes, so does his farm. He is 56, so won't be working in 10 years time.
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Post by cernunnos on Feb 5, 2024 18:22:21 GMT 1
I broadly agree but a few corrections of fact: I think there are several things that complicate the situation. Firstly late December to mid Feb there isn't as much to do in the fields 1, so if you are going to have a protest that is the time to do it. Come mid Feb, fields have to be sown and sileage needs to be cut, so it's back to work. On the whole I think the farmers maintained a great deal of public support. Maybe if it had dragged on for longer they wouldn't have done so. There is a lot of noise about supporting 'our farmers' and 'buy French', but despite what the farmers say I really don't think that is the problem. I look at my weekly shopping basket.. I don't buy beef, lamb or pork at all and if I did I would buy local (but then I live in a rural area where there is plenty of choice to buy direct). I buy chicken but all the chicken for sale in the supermarkets where I go is labelled as French. I assume also that French chicken is also sold in other EU countries, where despite what the farmers say, similar abysmal welfare standards are observed. The fruit and veg for sale in the supermarkets is mostly French when it is a product they grow here. I have never seen French avocados 2, bananas 3 or oranges 4. However most things that grow well in France also grow well in my vegetable garden, so, for example, I am still eating pumpkin, potatoes and tomato sauce from the garden. If I buy wine I buy French wine, but I drink far less than I used to and far less red wine than before. Although I am not typical of French diners my tastes are not that unusual. The problem I think is that the market and people's tastes are changing and not all farmers are able to embrace that change and adapt. Some have.. but not all. On the whole farming was seen as a manual job rather than an enterprise and many of the older farmers did not get the business training they need to run successfully these days. You see a real difference with some of the younger farmers coming out of college, who are much more enterprising. I thought the government actually responded to the demands of the farmers rather well.. of course many people were still unhappy because the things they were asking for are not the cause of their problems but they are unable to vocalise that into demands that the government can take responsibility for, other than to repeat the slogans put out by the RN. Slogans fire up the masses but they don't solve the problem. For a start without migrant labour no one this way would be able to harvest their grapes! I saw an interview last night with the RN spokesperson. A glamorous young blonde who didn't look like she would know one end of a tractor from another. She was struggling to come up with criticisms of Attal apart from saying that the government won't do what they said. No criticisms of the actual offer. 1; True for arable farmers but those with beasts have a 365 -366 this year - job. 2; Lots grown in the Ardèche and probably elsewhere but we buy locally when possible so I don't know. 3; French Guyana, Martinique - although I will accept there is often no choice and it is frequently from places like Cote d'Ivoire 4; Not oranges as such but plenty of Corsican Mandarins, Clementines etc.. We can be more flexible than perhaps we are and pay a bit more for more French produce. I would expect that most of them thar tractors up on the motorway were from arable farmers.
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Post by cernunnos on Feb 5, 2024 18:26:44 GMT 1
They don't just do the chicken farm Mysty. Usually there are other activities (honey, fois gras, a bit of cereal etc), but yes..it doesn't really add up financially. So when they say if we go, so does your food supply, in a sense they are right. I don't understand why any of them sign up to those schemes though.. I think there is too much wine grown..Probably what will happen is some will compete in the luxury field, some will fold and some will get taken over by the big cooperatives. In a way it has already happened around this way. Some of the vineyards have been bought out by South Africans, who bring a very different wine culture. The marketing is a problem. The growers of St Emilion were complaining that no one would buy their wine. St Emilion wine is one of the most well known wines in the world, so if you can't flog that then you are doing something wrong frankly. I mean the Italian growers managed to convince the entire world that their sh*t sparkling prosecco was better than champagne! (Vouvray far more palatable than either!) Our local friendly farmer who has cows and works single handed, will probably just sell his land to one of the other local farmers. There are two that are expanding and buying more land. He produces milk for the cheese factory and some cereal, but if the cheese factory goes, so does his farm. He is 56, so won't be working in 10 years time. Most farms work with the CUMA , so share the big machines. Around this way there are a lot of farmers that stay working after their retirable age because the pension is a lot less than the subsidies .
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Post by cernunnos on Feb 5, 2024 18:30:14 GMT 1
Just as an aside . I sat down and calculated how much I would need to sell my lamb at, directly, to receive the same amount as I get from the cooperative. I get on average €150 (€7/kilo) from the cooperative. To cover all the costs ( slaughter,boucherie, transport) I would need to sell the lamb at €17.5/kilo plus two half days for transport. So it is a lot easier to sell to the coop! My guess is that the supermarkets are selling at about €14 or more a kilo? The €17.5/kilo is for a whole Bio lamb cut up .
Supermarket prices vary greatly depending on which part of the lamb you buy and when
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Post by jackie on Feb 6, 2024 12:09:02 GMT 1
Copied from a French friends Facebook page, interesting……
Re the French farmers… a bit of history.
Ten years after the war and rationing was not long over. Food production was a national priority.
In France, it all started with the forced 'Grand remembrement' of the late 1950's. Hedges and trees were ripped out, farmers were encouraged to expand their acreage and the usage of chemical fertilisers was recommended by the 'Chambres d'Agriculture'. The banks gave out loans to buy heavy farm machinery and the farmers became indebted to them.
In the space of ten years, half of the traditional farms were lost, those farmers who kept a few cows and produced enough for themselves and to make a living by selling locally were forced out and had to find a new way of life which usually meant going to live in a town or city.
Food prices dropped as a result of this new mechanisation that was much less labour intensive. Obviously, the quality suffered but this wasn't really of great concern. To distribute the newly available foodstuffs (and goods of all sorts) politicians encouraged the implantation of supermarkets and hypermarkets (especially those on the left who saw them as a way of levelling up society).
But then the supermarkets got greedy, desiring ever increasing profit margins and started dictating prices to the farmers. After all, they could up their imports from Spain when they liked and use it as leverage. The farmers denounced these practises and turned to their union the FNSEA which, instead of seriously opposing the stranglehold the supermarkets had over them, became adept at negotiating govt and european aids which it did successfully for decades often using violent methods of protests to get what it wanted. The supermarkets and the hypers were largely left unbothered to continue their large profit margins.
The EU aid to farmers was proportionate to the size of the farm. the cerealiers, who had the highest acreages, got the most subsidies and they took control of the FNSEA. The current president of this majority farmers union is an immensely wealthy figure who is more of a high flying technocrat than a farmer. Amongst other things he has interests in bio fuels and brokered a deal with the govt that raised the price this year ..a bone of contention to his own members!. His interests are not those of the small 'exploitants' who man the barricades a fact that is often denounced by the 'Confédération Paysanne' the minority farmers union who prone a reasoned agriculture rather than one that relies on chemical intrants and EU handouts.
So, the farmers are protesting violently - again - and already the govt has announced the first (there will be more) measures to help them. As someone has pointed out, it's like a 'pièce de théâtre' written in advance: the farmers protest, the govt ignores them, the farmers become ultra violent, the govt makes concessions and the farmers go back to their farms - until the next flare up.
Environmental rules and restrictions on their practises are often cited by the farmers as being a burden to them but when a cauliflower is paid 70c to a farmer and sold in a supermarket for 5€ 95 it is obvious that this is where the main problem is to be found.
What can we do as consumers to help the French farmers ?
We can:
Use the farmers markets (marchés de producteurs) or if you frequent a mixed market favourise the stands you know to be local.
Buy direct from the farm
Buy local.
Buy in season.
Sign up with an AMAP if you can't get to a market.
This will ensure that the products we are consuming haven't passed through one of the central buying hubs that dictate prices to farmers and it will also ensure that what we are buying has been produced to French standards and not in other countries with lower ones.
- Tony Smith member and ex co ordinater (Midi Pyr) for Paysages de France.
📸apparently this is AI generated photo but well, it is very symbolic what what was/is happening… there were plenty of live videos from many European countries to know the true story.
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Post by lindalovely on Feb 6, 2024 13:28:06 GMT 1
My problem with the current system is the food miles things have travelled before they get to me. So yes buying direct is good but it is very difficult if you live in a city, you will find your choices somewhat limited ( I have never seen locally grown chick peas for example) and it requires spending quite a lot in fuel going to the various markets.
I always look at how far a product has travelled, so for example, if I am in the Pyrenees and buying salad stuff the produce from Spain would have travelled far less distance than that form France. (I bought some honey in the local market and the old guy selling it said he lives just over the border in Spain but this market was his nearest and it is where he sells his his honey. Similarly if you live in the North East of France you'd be daft to Eschew Dutch or Belgian cauliflower in favour of French ones from further away. I don't know what is it about cauliflower though.. the markup seems to be higher than any other product and the price varies massively from shop to shop.
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Post by jackie on Feb 6, 2024 14:07:52 GMT 1
My problem with the current system is the food miles things have travelled before they get to me. So yes buying direct is good but it is very difficult if you live in a city, you will find your choices somewhat limited ( I have never seen locally grown chick peas for example) and it requires spending quite a lot in fuel going to the various markets. I always look at how far a product has travelled, so for example, if I am in the Pyrenees and buying salad stuff the produce from Spain would have travelled far less distance than that form France. (I bought some honey in the local market and the old guy selling it said he lives just over the border in Spain but this market was his nearest and it is where he sells his his honey. Similarly if you live in the North East of France you'd be daft to Eschew Dutch or Belgian cauliflower in favour of French ones from further away. I don't know what is it about cauliflower though.. the markup seems to be higher than any other product and the price varies massively from shop to shop. I may be just looking at Brittany where I live but have found cities here have really good and large markets full of local produce. Also here there seems to have been a proliferation of farmers/fishermen selling direct with shops and even 24hr self service chiller cabinets full of their produce.
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Post by cernunnos on Feb 6, 2024 14:24:12 GMT 1
I read that piece (Jackie) a while ago , slightly changed now but still very correct. Where we live, there were still small farmers when we arrived 30+years ago , but they had all disappeared within 15 years . Now there is quite a large influx of young French " hippy" farmers here , that sell in the local markets and do a lot with crowd funding and associations. We buy very little veg , just mushrooms when the cepes have been finished and a cauliflower if the price is low enough ![:D](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/grin.png) Don't buy overpriced veg or fruit and buy local , that is our motto. It's great saying buy from the market , but there has to be time to do that too? I certainly agree with the food miles Linda , we always look where things originate from and choose the closest and in season.
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Post by lindalovely on Feb 6, 2024 14:43:53 GMT 1
I read that piece (Jackie) a while ago , slightly changed now but still very correct. Where we live, there were still small farmers when we arrived 30+years ago , but they had all disappeared within 15 years . Now there is quite a large influx of young French " hippy" farmers here , that sell in the local markets and do a lot with crowd funding and associations. We buy very little veg , just mushrooms when the cepes have been finished and a cauliflower if the price is low enough ![:D](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/grin.png) Don't buy overpriced veg or fruit and buy local , that is our motto. It's great saying buy from the market , but there has to be time to do that too? I certainly agree with the food miles Linda , we always look where things originate from and choose the closest and in season. I think it is pretty much what we do. Our local market has some stalls that sell direct and some that are just like greengrocers and often it is hard to tell which is which. However if we are working we can't take a day off to go to the market.. And if I want to buy for example staples such as flour and sugar etc the supermarket is essential. (Interestingly I watched a programme that said that the majority of lentils sold in India are imported from the USA and Europe) The reality is if everyone grew their own and supplemented it with local products then most of the farmers would still go out of business because the system is not set up to work like that. My view is that food is too cheap (although I know that even so there are many people who can't afford it, but that is a different issue) and too much of it is produced.
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exile
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Massif Central
Posts: 2,765
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Post by exile on Feb 6, 2024 17:24:31 GMT 1
I cannot but agree with the sentiments but have to issue a word of warning about food miles. In principle a good idea but it can be misleading.
We live in an area where small farms remain in the majority and long may it remain so. The terrain is such that expanding farms into big agglomerates would bring little or no advantage. Field sizes are determined by the geography not by how many farmers occupy the land. Buying at the local market is generally a good move, although here the quality is sometimes lacking.
The problem with food miles as I said above is that sometimes it can be misleading.
The example I used to give in the UK is the purchase of a bottle of red wine in Manchester - which by definition is never going to be a local product. Bordeaux or Chili? Food miles would say the former but energy consumption would lead you to Chilean. The Bordeaux wine is bottled in France (often at the chateau) put into boxes, the boxes put on pallets and the pallets loaded onto a truck that drives the length of France and then much of the length of England to the distribution centre near Manchester. The Chilean wine by contrast is loaded in bulk into a big plastic bag inside a 20ft container. The biggest bag in a box you are ever likely to find. The container is taken to port and shipped with many tens of thousands of similar boxes with very different products inside to Liverpool, where our box of wine is transhipped to a small ship or barge and sailed up the Manchester ship canal to a bottling plant, from where the wine is then distributed? The energy consumed per bottle is considerably less for the Chilean wine than for the French but food miles would suggest another choice.
Likewise if you do buy from the supermarket - and sometimes from those market stalls run by greengrocers rather than farmers - what you get may seem to be reasonably local but may actually be far from it. Many products - and often those sold by local cooperatives - get sent to central distribution centres for sale and the most popular one in France is Rungis near Paris. Rungis is like Covent Garden but on super strength steroids*. So what may seem like local produce has maybe done a round trip of several hundreds of kilometres.
Where possible, buy direct from the farmer. Where not possible use food miles as a guide but be aware you may be being misled.
* D’une superficie de 232 hectares avec plus de 72,7 hectares couverts (dont 47 hectares de bâtiments à usage commercial), il est approvisionné par camions, trains et avions (qui arrivent par l'aéroport d'Orly voisin) en provenance de toute l'Europe.
Le marché est particulièrement bien alimenté en légumes et fruits, produits de la mer, produits d'élevages, etc. Il fonctionne essentiellement tard dans la nuit, vers 3-4 heures ; à 11 heures le matin, tous les rayons se vident. Avec onze bâtiments, répartis sur 66 hectares, le secteur des fruits et légumes est, de très loin, le plus étendu.
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Nifty
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Post by Nifty on Feb 6, 2024 20:46:02 GMT 1
The above post is. A good example of how concepts and statistics can be used by marketeers to pitch a story.
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Post by woolybanana on Feb 6, 2024 23:02:17 GMT 1
Lamb, sliced leg of, €21.90 per kg, price in Leclerc today. Seems somewhat excessive!
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exile
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Massif Central
Posts: 2,765
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Post by exile on Feb 6, 2024 23:20:00 GMT 1
I would not buy it but most of the time here the price of unsliced lamb leg is €25 or more.
It is only when NZ lamb arrives that prices drop.
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Post by cernunnos on Feb 7, 2024 8:43:44 GMT 1
Lamb, sliced leg of, €21.90 per kg, price in Leclerc today. Seems somewhat excessive! That is a " normal " price for lamb . As I calculated earlier for myself selling directly a whole lamb would be €17.5 /kilo just to get the same as selling live. The gigot is the most expensive part of the lamb carcase , our lamb would cost €50 for a gigot , which is €20/kilo, then plus the supermarket profit ?
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Post by cernunnos on Feb 7, 2024 8:44:46 GMT 1
I would not buy it but most of the time here the price of unsliced lamb leg is €25 or more. It is only when NZ lamb arrives that prices drop. So you buy the NZ lamb?
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