French chickens home to roost

Press, 28 January 1984, Page 14

French chickens home to roost

From “The Economist,” London

French farmers have lost their tempers again. The month has seen them hijacking British lorries carrying lamb and barbecueing Benelux bacon alongside the motorways. In the southern department of the Aude, wine growers poured 5000 litres of imported plonk on the roads. In the Pyrenees, piglet breeders staged a 35-kilometre cortege of farm vehicles to protest against plummetting prices. This might be dismissed as traditional French rural theatre staged to coincide with the European Common Market’s farm price negotiations. On the face of it, so long as the E.E.C.’s common agricultural policy continues, French farmers have few cares beyond worrying if the E.E.C. will adopt the small price rises proposed by the Brussels agricultural commissioner, Mr Poul Dalsager, and denounced by French farm unions as ridiculous. Provisional figures for 1983 put French farm production at FFr25O billion ($29 billion), only 0.6 per cent below the record 1982 level in real terms. French farming is the most varied in western Europe in the range of produce and the size of farms.

It accounts for 26 per cent of E.E.C. agricultural output in value terms. It makes up 37 per cent of the common market’s cereal production, 32 per cent of poultry, 30 per cent of cattle, 26 per cent of milk products and 18 per cent of pork. In one of his more lyrical moods, the former French President, Mr Valery Giscard d’Estaing, referred to agriculture as France’s “green oil.” The trade performance since the drought of 1977 has borne him out. In 1981, France’s agricultural surplus hit FFr26 billion. ($3 billion). It declined to FFrlB.6 billion in 1982, but bounced back to FFr22 billion in 1983. In 1983, some unwelcome chickens came home to roost. They will go on flapping in 1984. French farming is caught in a nasty mesh of over-production, indebtedness, uneconomic small units, high feed costs, international competition, tighter government budgetary policies, and its bete noire, E.E.C. monetary compensation amounts (M.C.A.s), which, French farmers say, penalise them and help West

German farmers. In spite of the exodus from the land in the 1960 s and 19705, 8 per cent of France’s working population is still in agriculture. After construction and public works, farming is France’s biggest business. Most farmers operate familyrun units: 27 per cent of French farms are under five hectares; 59 per cent are under 20 and only 3 per cent are bigger than 100. French grain barons are among the richest farmers in Europe, but, by some estimates, one third of the 1.85 million people working in agriculture earn less than the minimum industrial wage. Modernisation over the last 25 years has made some parts of French agriculture, such as grains and beet, as efficient as anything in Europe. Soft wheat output jumped from 12.3 million tonnes in 1970 to 25 million tonnes in 1982. The number of quintals per hectare rose from 35 to 53. In the same period, the total value of cereal production rose from FFr9 billion to FFr3B.5 billion. With world wheat markets glutted, the French are searching for any markets they can find. The French businessman who has the inside track in east-west trade, Mr Jean-Baptiste Doumeng, came up at the end of 1983 with a contract to sell 1.3 million tonnes of wheat to Russia, followed by an agreement from Moscow to buy 120,000 tonnes of flour. Dairy farmers are now among the most agitated. The leader of the main farm union, Mr Francois Guillaume, is personally concerned: he runs a dairy firm in Lorraine. French milk producers say M.C.A.S make it impossible for them to compete effectively with their West German counterparts. When Mr Guillaume’s own milk supplies were cut off last autumn by floods, he found himself buying West German milk because it was cheaper than milk from Brittany. French milk output rose from 257 million hectolitres in 1970 to 319 million in 1982. In value terms, thanks to E.E.C. support policies, it leapt from FFrlO.9 billion in 1970 to FFr4O billion in 1982. Dairy farmers want to hold on to that income. Unlike cereal and beet production, milk production is still dominated by small farms. The number of owners of cows dropped from 938,300 in 1969 to 458,200 in 1981, but 10 per cent of the survivors had fewer than 10 cows. Nearly three quarters owned fewer than 20 cows; only 2 per cent had more than 50. Pigs and poultry were viewed in the 1970 s as prime growth areas for French farming, particularly in the poor but hard-working west. By 1981, Brittany accounted for 44.5 per cent of France’s 11.4 million pigs and one co-operative in Landerneau was turning out 500 million eggs a year. The Bretons do not have fond memories of 1983. Egg prices slumped. The Landerneau co-oprative had to lend mem-

bers FFr4l5O million to keep them solvent. After eggs, pork prices dropped below cost. Dutch pigmeat (Eurospeak for pork, ham, and bacon) flooded into France. Mr Francois Calvez, sales director of another big co-operative, at Lamballe, reckons that Dutch pork enjoys a 10 per cent price edge because of the M.C.A.S. On top of that, the Bretons were

hit by low-cost competition from Brazil in Middle East poultry markets where they had previously enjoyed a clear run. Like other livestock farmers in west and central France, the Bretons suffered from the cost of transporting American feeds from the main European landing port of Rotterdam. The green oil mirage was kept shimmering in 1982 by a 9.1 per

cent jump in farm income and generous “special aid” from the Government. Provisional figures for 1983 show income fell 3.8 per cent in real terms. Government aid is being restrained. Still, French farmers will get FFrlOO billion in subsidies and aid in 1984 — 45 per cent of likely gross farm income. In 1970, the proportion was 33 per cent — Copyright, “The Economist,” London.