Lawmakers in France are moving closer to a new law that, if passed, would see input costs for agri-food producers incorporated into prices paid by processors and retailers.
The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA) has been following developments around this potential legislation, noting today (Wednesday, April 21) that a bill has been proposed in parliament in France.
Pat McCormack, the ICMSA president, said that the bill would put mandatory ‘cost indicators’ into the price negotiations between farmers and processors/retailers.
The proposed law aims to ensure that farmers get a better share of final consumer price by legally insisting that the cost of producing food is factored into the prices paid to farmers.
The bill includes a number of related measures, including mandatory and multi-year contracting.
McCormack highlighted that “much interest” will focus on the bill’s clause that would introduce a ban on food clearance sales without permission of the farmers involved.
The ICMSA president also noted that the bill has been welcomed by the French minister for agriculture.
Ireland vs. France
According to McCormack, Irish politicians contrast unfavourably with their French counterparts.
“Irish farmers will watch the French development with great interest. The contrast between the way their politicians see and understand the position of France’s primary food producers and the way ours do is very instructive,” he claimed.
“In Ireland we have no legal mechanism for ensuring that farmers get a fair price at all, much less [to] ensure that the costs of producing the food in the first place are covered,” McCormack highlighted.
He said: “What’s even worse is that this question is daily becoming more pressing as the costs and inputs around environmental sustainability become clearer.
“It’s already obvious that we are going to have to reform and recalculate what we pay for food, because the present system is not even paying the economic costs, much less the growing environmental costs.
“We are going to have to introduce a system that ensures that the people producing the food are paid the economic and environmental costs of producing that food,” McCormack argued, claiming that this has gone “completely unaddressed” by government.
Agri-Food 2030 Strategy
Referring to the recently published Agri-Food Strategy 2030, the farm leader noted that it contained “no mention in there anywhere of the self-evident fact that the scale of the changes involved must affect the consumer prices”.
“The nagging suspicion is that these new policies are premised on the fantasy that farmers will pay for it all, jump through all the hoops and carry all the burden, while everyone else carries on exactly as before. That’s not going to happen.
“Everyone has to realise this. France certainly has, and this proposed law shows that [the French] are already moving forward on the basis that the days when the retail corporations decided food policy for their own benefit are over,” McCormack argued.
He concluded: “The Irish government and our TDs should be looking hard and preparing for a similar debate here immediately.”