I have been farming with my wife since 2001 in Saint-Alban in northern Brittany.

Our farm has a breeding and fattening 220-sow pig unit and 104ha of crops with wheat, maize and rapeseed. We employ one staff member.

In the news at the moment, the majority of French farmers do not understand the decision by President Emmanuel Macron to ban glyphosate within three years even though the EU has just re-authorised it for five years. This political decision clashes with his election commitments, when he campaigned against the constant French gold-plating of EU regulations.

Giving up glyphosate is and will be a problem if no long-term solutions are found. It will distort competition with our European neighbours without compensation. As we always say: the greener, the dearer.

For the past few years, French tillage farmers, especially those in mixed farming areas between the main grain and livestock specialised regions, have faced a difficult situation because of successive droughts and floods. In those areas, many farmers have gone bankrupt. However, in Brittany, the conditions have remained good for feed wheat and the average yield in the area is 7.5t/ha (3t/ac).

Since the summer, the pigmeat market has lost its shine and prices are now consistently falling.

Production cost

The price at Brittany’s wholesale MPB market is now under the production cost of €1.18/kg. For many farmers, the previous lift in prices driven by exports to China was much to short. It gave us a break from the crisis of 2015 and 2016, but the core problems of France’s disorganised pigmeat industry have not gone away.

At this point, farmers have high expectations for the Etats-Généraux de l’Alimentation, a far-reaching participative forum on the future of France’s agri-food industry launched by President Macron in July. This has thrown open many debates, three of which are sticking out for me:

  • Strengthen producer organisations and their bargaining power in the face of almighty French retailers.
  • Develop proper supply chains strategies for each sector.
  • Promote European social, environmental and fiscal harmonisation to level the playing field between European farmers. Otherwise, the “origin France” label will have to raise additional value from the consumers to fund not only our work, but also our country’s social and environmental choices.