Certain products in France have become unprofitable for farmers due to cheaper imports and price queezing by wholesale buyers for supermarkets. The cost of fodder for livestock rearing to produce milk and meat products has increased but sales prices on markets have remained stable.
Helpless farmers in tears have explained their plight on television (long working hours and increasing overdrafts) but it is only when hundreds of tractors on motorways disrupted holiday traffic that the Government has reacted !
The Socialist Government has allocated 600 million euros to cover compensation payments to needy farmers. This may not be enough but what is sure is that it certainly will not help to solve the root causes of the problem farmers face.
There are thousands of individual farmers being squeezed by organised buyers ! Alone French farmers cannot protect themselves, particularly if organised buyers ressort to importing cheaper products from abroad, which is quite legal in the context of the EUROPEAN UNION !
Farmers must reduce their reliance on monopolistic, country-wide supermarket chains. This is what the Government in France must help to introduce.
Subventions are a "drip-feed" solution. Next year the same problem will still be there, and the cost will be much higher !
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