After the general food states, the indispensable agricultural revolution

Editorial of "World". History has shown that general states can be heralds of revolutions. If all players play game, it could be so for those of food, whose first phase ended on Wednesday 11 October. The head of State wants, in effect, to expel a vast reclamation of relations between farmers, food processors and distributors.

In former, it has been a long time since Jacquerie rumbles. Wedged between greed of multinationals and perpetual search, on part of consumers, of lowest possible price, peasant world played role of adjustment variable up to excess. Today a farmer in five loses money by exercising his trade, while one in three earns less than 350 euros per month.

This impoverishment is not sustainable. "It is food sovereignty of France," said Emmanuel Macron. For human despair is added an economic model that has become counterproductive. Certainly, reform of trade relations established by Law of modernization of economy of 2008 has largely achieved its purpose. The prices were pulled down to restore purchasing power to consumer.

But this immediate gain for some has turned into deadly economic pressure for ors. The recurrent crises of milk or swine production are only most visible symptoms of a deeper evil, resulting in a precarisation of farms and SMEs, a degradation of employment and working conditions and a Weakening of territories.

Orientations are common sense

The President of Republic has decided to reshuffle maps to give a little oxygen to agricultural world, while promoting a transformation of our food production system, which must meet societal and environmental expectations of French.

The guidelines are common sense. First, low price race has to stop. The definition of price paid to farmer will no longer be based on margin that distributor or industrialist wants to pocket, but on basis of production cost of first. A law to this effect should be proposed in first half of 2018.

If objective is for farmers to be able to live off fruit of ir work, re is no question of keeping farms under infusion that are not viable. In exchange for this Copernican revolution, Emmanuel Macron asks farmers to better organize mselves and structure production channels to become more competitive.

This is not first time that a government has tried to strike a balance between farmers, industrialists and distributors. The previous attempts have systematically failed, for lack of consensus between too divergent interests. Now everyone seems to have realized that our model is not sustainable.

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Even Michel-Edouard Leclerc, who, a few days ago, opposed revaluation of resale threshold at a loss, that is, price below which distributor cannot sell its products, today accepts principle from moment when This applies exclusively to foodstuffs. The tariff negotiations that begin on 1 November will be a first test to determine wher announced revolution is going to be completed.