After that of bakers, restaurateurs, craftsmen and all VSEs and SMEs-SMIs, here is the disarray of arboriculturists. Strangled, like them, by the stratospheric inflation of their production costs: because, to make an apple, you need fertilizer, treatments, fuel, labor, pallets. Christophe Belloc, a fruit producer from Montauban, from the National Pear Apple Association, details, at the microphone ofEuropean 1this dramatic inflation: “The price of wood to make pallets or trays has doubled. Electricity by four » and “whether it’s fertilizers, diesel for tractors, it’s between 30 and 100% more! »
But the misfortune of arborists is to be caught in a pincer movement between inflation on one side and distributors on the other. Currently, large retailers, through the voice of the CEOs of Lidl, this Thursday, or Leclerc, present themselves as the great ally of the consumer by staging their fight against the increases demanded by the food industry, forced to pass on its costs to survive. These great philanthropists forget to specify that they contribute to the ruin of the producers by imposing on them purchase prices which oblige them to sell at a loss.
This Saturday, arborists mobilized to cry out their despair and attract the attention of the government. In the Tarn-et-Garonne as in the Vaucluse, major fruit-producing departments, the findings are the same and the images spectacular: arboriculturists are forced to uproot entire orchards, which are now unprofitable.
Apple tree uprooting operation in Tarn-et-Garonne to demand an increase in the selling price of 20 cents per kilo pic.twitter.com/CZAOegUu5I
— BFMTV (@BFMTV) January 14, 2023
The claim of arborists to survive is simple: 20 cents more per kilo, as Françoise Roche, this arborist from Moissac, explains to France 3which points to the other big problem of French fruits, unfair foreign competition: “Countries like Poland or Italy are able to produce much less expensively than us with much worse social conditions than in France, production conditions that have nothing to do with France. »
For the moment the government seems to be absent subscribers. On Twitter, deputy RN Grégoire de Fournas, himself a winegrower, did not fail to recall the role of foreign competition:
If producers tear up their orchards, it is also because of foreign competition. When reviewing the law #Descrozaille, I will defend localism and the protection of our agriculture against foreign competition. https://t.co/gUQ8JcUZbA
— Gregory of Fournas (@gdefournas) January 14, 2023
These uprooting of entire orchards are a new manifestation of French decline and of an economic and social crisis that promises to be devastating: French arboriculture has lost 40% of its orchards in twenty years! The equivalent of the surface of forty football fields every month…
Every month in France, the equivalent of 40 orchard football pitches are uprooted. Until the complete disappearance of the French orchard? #payyourproducer pic.twitter.com/ygA0cLIMT1
— CSFL (@csfldefrance) January 14, 2023
In this sector as in the others, the current crisis only highlights the serious economic errors of the last twenty or thirty years. It is to be hoped that these shocking images will finally wake up consumers, large retailers and the government.
1st cutting in the orchards of the Alps. Apple productions recognized for their quality, which will disappear tomorrow if there is no change in the practices of large retailers. + #20cents #payyourproducer pic.twitter.com/gIX8H6NMRm
— CSFL (@csfldefrance) January 14, 2023
#arborists #forced #uproot #orchards #country
