43 years after Edith Cresson, Annie Genevard, a teacher by training, member of the RPR, then of LR since 1996, is the second woman to become Minister of Agriculture in France. She takes up her duties in a context of worsening of the situation of an underpaid peasant world while contagious diseases transmitted by midges cause some of the livestock to die on farms.
Aged 68, a member of the “Les Républicains” party and a member of parliament for Doubs since 2012, Annie Genevard was appointed Minister of Agriculture on Saturday evening. She succeeds the very discreet Marc Fesneau, who had held the position since the 2022 presidential election. During President Macron’s first five-year term, four men who campaigned for him in 2017 had succeeded one another in this position. The first was the old senator from Cantal Jacques Mézard. He was replaced after four weeks by Stéphane Travert, a socialist member of parliament for Manche during François Hollande’s five-year term. Travert was replaced by Didier Guillaume, socialist senator for Drôme, in October 2018. To his great surprise, Didier Guillaume was forced to pack his bags on July 6, 2020 to make way for Julien Denormandie, a close friend of the Head of State, but who has distanced himself from him since 2022.
Annie Genevard was the second woman to hold the position of Minister of Agriculture after Edith Cresson between May 1981 and March 1983. She took up this ministerial post at a time when the farming world was encountering more and more difficulties due to low farm gate prices and contagious diseases such as bluetongue (BTV) in sheep, Epizootic Haemorrhagic Disease (EHD) in cattle. In addition, in some places, there was avian flu in poultry farms and African swine fever transmitted to farmed pigs by wild boars in Europe.
The price of a ton of wheat no longer covers production costs
On September 10, a ton of soft wheat delivered to the port of Rouen for export cost €214 compared to €330 two years earlier. According to Eric Thirouin, president of the National Association of Wheat Producers (AGPB), the price paid at the farm gate was only €175 per ton, while the cost price is €264 once European aid is deducted. This translates into an average loss of €550 per hectare of soft wheat in France. In Creil, a ton of grain corn cost €203 on the same day compared to €320 two years earlier.
For wheat as for corn, the removal of customs duties on cereals produced in Ukraine and sold in the member countries of the European Union has reduced the outlets for French cereals in our neighboring countries, which is causing prices to fall in the trading rooms. At the same time, Russia is exporting more and more wheat to the African continent and the Middle East, which is causing France’s exports to decline.
In our domestic market, mid-range and especially high-end food products are seeing their outlets shrink due to the decline in purchasing power of a growing number of households. Packaged milk from organic farming has seen its outlets shrink by 19.3% over one year and organic butter is experiencing the same trend with a decline of 15.9% compared to June 2023. As a result, processors are causing the price of milk to fall from farms converted to organic farming. While Europe threatens to tax imports of Chinese electric cars to the Old Continent, China says it wants to retaliate by taxing European dairy products, 23% of the export value of which is supplied by France, which also risks seeing its cognac exports to China overtaxed.
Contagious diseases and livestock mortality
On September 19, just before the transfer of power, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty indicated that the vaccination of sheep and cattle against contagious diseases such as bluetongue would be extended to the Brittany Region in addition to those already concerned, namely: Hauts de France, Normandy, Ile de France, Grand Est, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Centre Val de Loire, Pays de la Loire, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, as well as several departments in the Nouvelle Aquitaine region. Free vaccines were promised to breeders, but orders do not meet more than 20% of needs. While the grape harvest is underway, Marc Fesneau’s services also published an ambiguous text on September 19, an excerpt of which is as follows:
“Backed by the temporary Ukraine framework for state aid, the notified scheme proposes to finance the uprooting of vines in order to perpetuate the activity of wine-growing operations, with an amount of up to 4,000 euros per hectare, for a forecast envelope of 120 million euros in view of the results of the survey. The aid would be granted to farmers who abandon, on the areas thus uprooted, the production of replanting authorizations, and who also renounce mobilizing or requesting, during the six wine-growing seasons 2024 to 2029 inclusive, authorizations for new plantings. This scheme thus provides a structural response encountered by the agricultural sector, in particular due to the war in Ukraine, and will contribute to balancing and better calibrating production volumes in the long term in relation to changes in consumption.”
Emmanuel Macron, plunderer of the rural world since 2008
Before the war in Ukraine began, France exported an average of 1.7 million bottles of champagne to Russia annually. At the same time, the three wine regions of Alsace, Burgundy and Bordeaux exported an annual average of 12,900 hectolitres of wine to Russia. There is therefore a link between the closure of this market and the plan to uproot vines in France, even if it is not the only cause.
On this day of the first meeting of the new Council of Ministers, we will refrain here from passing judgment on the choice of Annie Genevard to occupy the position of Minister of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty before seeing her at work. But the complexity of the files, aggravated by capitalist globalization, will make her task difficult. Let us add that the current President of the Republic has behaved particularly badly towards farmers for about fifteen years. In 2007, he was responsible for drafting the Attali Commission report that the parliamentary right used in 2008 to vote for the Economic Modernization Law (LME) aimed at reducing agricultural prices at the farm gate for the benefit of distributors at the request of Michel-Edouard Leclerc to President Sarkozy. In October 2017, Emmanuel Macron claimed to repair this injustice with the EGALIM law. But he made this condition: that the farmers manage to win the showdown with the distributors in the annual negotiations on store entry prices, while it is the processors who negotiate with the distributors!
Misleading his interlocutors is President Macron’s permanent strategy in order to exclusively serve the interests of billionaires for whom he abolished the Wealth Solidarity Tax (ISF) upon his arrival at the Elysée.
