the essential
Friday April 26, tomato producers affiliated with Légumes de France took action in the supermarkets of Agen and Bon-Encontre. The reason is the lack of visibility on products from Morocco and denounce unfair competition.
It’s 10 a.m. at the Intermarché in Bon-Encontre, Friday April 26, customers are filing into the store. In the fruit and vegetable section, tomato producers are mobilizing.
“We are asked to make increasingly cleaner tomatoes with labor at €13 per hour while at the same time we import Moroccan products at less than €1 per hour and with chemical products”, protests Jonas Hollaar, producer in Bias and member of the Légumes de France association. So to show their dissatisfaction, they stuck yellow labels with the inscription “Origine Maroc”.
“We are in the middle of the campaign for the European elections. Politicians must understand how fed up we are. We must stop bringing in products, we must regain our food sovereignty in France and in Europe,” thunders the original producer by Bias. The latter produces 10,000 kg per year.
A lack of clarity
BalanceTonOrigine is starting to flourish on social networks to denounce this unfair competition. On site, in the Bon-Encontre supermarket, customers follow one another in the aisle where the dark red tomatoes face each other between those from Morocco and France. Further on, in punnets, cherry tomatoes from the two countries are side by side.
Picture – Vianney Masse
“Here, we can barely distinguish the French origin,” says Jonas Hollaar, taking in hand a tray of French origin. To be able to align, we cannot make packaging like the Moroccan trays. The customer does not always pay attention and logically turn to those of Morocco. We ask for a large display with the origin of the product, a flag or the name. From now on, the yellow sticker leaves no room for doubt. Faced with unrest, tomatoes from the Maghreb are neglected.
“Usually, I go to the market. There, I’m in a hurry, it’s true that we can’t tell the difference between the two. I try as much as possible to favor French,” confesses a customer.
A general fed up
Danielle, an 83-year-old retiree, calls on the producers to congratulate them: “The farmers, they are starving. We must give priority to France, it is our producers who must have priority. I worked in the fields, I know what that means.”
The objective of this action is not to target a particular brand, but to alert the consumer. The producers then continued their tour of the city’s supermarkets.
