France treats farmers as sacred cows

Press, 16 August 1976, Page 16

France treats farmers as sacred cows

By

GODFREY BROWN

in the

“Daily Telegraph,” London

There is in Brussels an irreverent and, naturally, unofficial school of thought which holds that the way to solve the Common Market’s seemingly never-ending problems of surplus mountains of butter, skimmedmilk powder and other products is to kill off a few French farmers rather than the 1,200,000 dairy cows that Mr Lardinois, the Dutch Commissioner for Agriculture, wants to take out of production.

This drastic "remedy” speaks volumes for the power of the French farming lobby. It contains some legendary names. People like M. Raymond Viel, of Clermont Ferrand, the doorway to the Massif Central, in whose hills some of France’s smallest and poorest farmers are to be found. Although his influence is said to be waning, he had the reputation of being able to block roads throughout a large part of France simply by picking up a telephone.

There is also M. Henri Cayre, of the powerful sugar-beet growers’ lobby. He demonstrated his political muscle two years ago in a television broadcast when he warned of an impending sugar shortage. Next day, in o e Paris supermarket alone, 10 tons of sugar was sold over the counter. T ie following night, no less a figure than the Finance Ministc himself appeared on television to declare there was no prospect of a sugar shortage. The fact is that French farming, which tends to be dismissed in Britain as an inefficient, peasant-style operation, is remarkably well organised, with a bumper crop of multiinitialled organisations to represent the views of the many different sectors. Through them, the farmers exercise a great deal of political weight which does not seem to be diminishing, in spite of the reduction in the farmers’ numbers and their proportion of the population. Within a generation, the number of people working n agriculture in France has dropped from over onequarter of the working population to about 10 per cent. But at some 2.25 million it’s still a substantial number, particularly when compared with the 650,000 people or

thereabouts employed in British agriculture. Partly, the French farmers’ power is a reflection of the fact. that elections are won or lost by fractional shifts of voting loyalties, and the farming community, in spite of the noise it so often makes, can basically be relied on as a solid and constant anti-Left bloc. The delicate task for the Government is to make economic improvements without jeopardising this vote. The farmers’ power also stems from the importance of agriculture in the French economy. France has the biggest area of arable land — more than double that in Britain — and the largest agricultural production in Western Europe. Farm products account for some 16-17 per cent of France’s total overseas sales and in the world “league” of agricultural exporters France is second only to America. Indeed, following the increase in oil prices, the French Government is putting increasing emphasis on boosting farm output to. improve the agricultural trade balance.

These hopes — and France’s place in the farm export table — have suffered a setback from this year’s severe drought, however, which is expected to cut the favourable trade balance in farm products for the second successive year. Last year, French farm exports fell in value for the first time in 10 years, mainly because a poor harvest cut cereal exports by 27 per cent. From a favourable trade balance of over 10,000 million francs in 1974, it fell last year to 4600 million francs, and this year, as a result of the drought, it is expected to be down to about 3000 million francs, according to M. Gallicher, principal economist in the national headquarters in Paris of the influential chambers of agriculture. The drought is proving a useful ally for the French farm lobby in its fight against Common Market proposals to curb the Community’s excessive milk production. Just how serious its effects are will not be clear until later in the year when harvesting of most crops should have been completed. But, according to M. Gallicher, instead of the 30 million tons of cereals, equal to

the 1974 level, which had been likely, only 20 million tons is expected. The French sugar crop this year should have been some 3,500,000 tons. The size of the eventual harvest depends on what rainfall there is in the coming months, but M. Gallicher expects about 2,500,000 tons. Milk production, instead of the average 4730 million gallons, could be down by nearly 700 million gallons. On the other hand, because of a lack of fodder or cereals, there would be overproduction of beef this year, as farmers kill off the beasts they cannot feed. According to M. Gallicher, farmers’ incomes this year will certainly be down —-

though by how much it is impossible yet to forecast. He maintained it was the third year in succession that French farmers’ incomes have fallen — by 8.3 per cent in. 1974 compared with 1973, and a further 3 per cent last year. To quell the rural unrest the drought is provoking, the Government has promised aid to make incomes comparable to last year’s. Already, the French consumer is beginning to feel the first effects of the drought, through a record increase in bread prices last month, While French farming experts admit that their consumers are not particularly happy about paying high

food prices, they have long been accustomed to paying more, and seem more tolerant of farmers’- demands than the British. One explanation, suggested by M. Michel Le Gouis, formerly M. Giscard d’Estaing’s adviser on farming when he was Finance Minister, and now DirectorGeneral of the National Association for Agricultural Development, is that France was recently a rural country, and every urban worker had relatives still farming. Townspeople often help with the harvesting and are generally in much closer touch with the land than people in British cities. “They know a lot of the farmers are really poor, and

when they block the roads, they don't do it as a lobby, but'because they are desperate people,” he said. It is partly true that they are poor because they are too small and inefficient. However, the arable farms growing cereals and sugar beet in the Paris Basin and the plains north and northeast of the Loire have big, efficient and prosperous farms, but dairy farms are a matter of small herds providing an assured income through sales to local farmers’ co-operatives. What many of the small tamers are doing, rather than increase their herd size, is to switch to higheryielding breeds such as the Friesian, which will only accentuate the E.E.C.’s milk surplus problem. With an E.E.C. butter mountain of 200,000 tons, and 1,300,000 tons of skimmed-milk powder, the cost to Community taxpayers of dealing with these surpluses is steadily rising. This year the cost of supporting E.E.C. dairy farmers is expected to reach some $l6OO million, over 35 per cent of the total E.E.C. farm budget. The milk situation is a classic problem: dairying is about the one “crop” that provides a regular weekly or monthly income, like a wage or salary, and for many farmers it is the only option open to them. In some of the less favoured areas, it’s impossible to produce other crops, and if they quit their farms — as indeed many have in the past when the general economic climate was brighter — the farmers’ likely fate now is to swell the ranks of the unemployed.

However, there is a widespread aversion to using direct “social” payments to such farmers to help them to stay on the land, as an alternative to constantly raising farm support prices, which only cuts consumption and creates the dairy product mountains. The Government has itself made direct payments in the past to protect farmers’ incomes, but the farmers themselves dislike this "charity.” They would rather have higher prices, and what the E.E.C.’s common agricultural policy has provided up to now is a high level of support prices and a guaranteed outlet (the intervention cold store) for their milk products.