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Truck driver Jeremy Domf understands the struggles of French farmers and wants to support local food producers. But like many consumers, buying French food isn’t always an option.
Farmer protests across Europe this week highlight how both farmers and households are being hurt these days by multiple factors, including persistent inflation, high interest rates and volatile energy prices. did.
“We value our farmers, so we understand their anger. If they weren’t here, what would we do? We wouldn’t eat. Protests like this are important. ,” Donff said.
But while weighing Spanish lemons in a supermarket on the outskirts of Paris, Domfu noticed that most of the produce around him was imported. And even if French food is available, not everyone can afford it. At the Paris market this week, Moroccan clementines and Polish mushrooms sold for about half the price of French mushrooms.
The farmers’ protests have garnered widespread public support in France, including from truck drivers like Domf, whose livelihoods have been threatened by highway blockades as part of the protests. Domphe lives in Bussy-Saint-Antoine, a suburb of Paris, but he is originally from Réunion Island in the French Indian Ocean. Agriculture is important on Réunion Island, and many people buy directly from local farmers.
In recent days, governments including France, Spain and Greece have agreed to pump hundreds of millions of euros into agriculture in a bid to calm protesters. The EU also made concessions to farmers who are sensitive to voters’ concerns ahead of June’s European Parliament elections.
At a nearby farmers’ market this week, several shoppers opted for particularly expensive French meat and vegetables over cheaper imports, in part due to recent protests.
“I know it’s not easy for some people to spend more on groceries, but thanks to my pension I can do it, so I prefer high-quality (French) products,” said retiree Patrick Jobard. I decided to do it,” he said.
Prices of wheat, corn, and other grains (excluding rice) will rise as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushes global food prices to record highs in 2022, exacerbating hunger around the world, but farmers’ profits will decline. It’s lower than it was before the improvement.
On the other hand, the price increases seen in grocery stores are tied to other costs after the food leaves the farm, so consumers are not paying much attention to the decline in prices of wheat and other food products traded on global markets. He hasn’t received any benefits, said senior Joseph Glauber. Researcher at the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Things like energy costs and rising worker wages are “impacting every step of food processing, all the way to the retail shelf,” he said.
As prices fall, farmers get less for what they grow than before and face uncertainty due to volatile energy prices.
The situation is particularly difficult for European farmers, he said, as Yemen’s Houthi rebels attack ships in the Red Sea, disrupting trade by destroying cheap Russian natural gas.
The Red Sea is a key trade route linking Asia and Europe, so farmers in the European Union, Ukraine and Russia face consequences as shipping companies divert ships on long-distance voyages around the tip of southern Africa. .
“Those costs are passed back on to producers,” said Glauber, a former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Not only that, but higher interest rates make it more expensive to borrow to buy farm equipment and other necessities. European farmers also face climate regulations that could drive up costs not borne by competitors such as the United States.
However, while farmers in major economies such as Europe and the United States receive funding from governments to grow food, “the vast majority of agriculture around the world is unsubsidized. We’re competing,” Glauber said.
Although food inflation has eased, especially in Europe, as the economy has slowed, “people still think back to two years ago and say, ‘Hey, this meat costs even more than what we were paying two years ago. “It’s still very high,” he said. .
Cheap imports are a major concern for farmers across Europe.
In France, the main focus of farmers’ anger was the huge Rungis trading center, Europe’s largest food market. It supplies food to many restaurants and supermarkets in Paris, but is also seen as a symbol of the globalized food chain.
This week, 91 people were arrested after a group of rural farmers in the south-west camped their tractors outside a gate and then pushed past armored vehicles guarding the site.
“I chose to come here because it is a very symbolic place and a symbol of food,” said the farmer, who brought the grain and fruit trees there by tractor from the Lot-et-Garonne region of southern France. said Jean-Baptiste Chemin, a farmer at the garden. A placard nearby read: “We are feeding you, but we are dying.”
When the police came to take him into custody, he joked to them in his distinctive Southern accent that he would not object to being taken to the police station. “Anyway, I’ve already traveled 600 kilometers (360 miles).”
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Associated Press writer Courtney Bonnell in London contributed to this report.
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