PRICE OF WINE IN FRANCE

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27632, 13 April 1955, Page 9

PRICE OF WINE IN FRANCE

Protest By Southern

Growers

PLAN TO BLOCK ROADS AND HAMPER VOTING

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, April 12. Once again f the vinegrowers of Southern France are blocking the roads in protest against the low price of wine, says the Paris correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian.” The trouble is mainly in the Department of the Herault, but is threatening to spread to neighbouring Gard. The Mayors of the Herault have offered their collective resignation and are threatening to close town hals and civic buildings on the day of the forthcoming county council elections, thus dislocating in their department arrangements for polling and counting votes. The discontent is an old story. Departments in this area used to produce more than half the red wine, that is red wine and nothing else —whereas now the French market only looks to them for about one-third. Most of the area is good for nothing else. The immediate cause of the trouble is the steadily increasing wine production of Algeria, which last year exported 18.000,000 hectolitres of the 19,000,000 it produced. Added to this is the fact that in France itself the centre and west of the country is producing more and more red wine.

The French Government cannot ignore the wine growers, especially with the approaching elections. Once they defy the law in sufficient numbers nothing can be done about it, the correspondent says. In fact, on this occasion, police have not tried to keep open any but the main high roads. . There are two remedies the Government might introduce. The first is government purchase bf surplus wine for industrial alcohol—already produced in excess. The second is the rejection of the area under vines wherever alternate crops can be grown.

In spite of the assistance offered, farmers have so far only offered to change the use of one-tenth of the land which it had been hoped to withdraw from vine cultivation.