The Meatrix is committed to helping educate people around the world about the issues of sustainability, specifically in terms of food production and consumption. This action page is a way for us to communicate with the concerned people in France, to encourage them to take action locally, but also to exchange information and experiences at the international level. We hope to create a network of concerned people, communities and organizations around the world that all join together to promote more sustainable food production and consumption patterns.
This action page will provide you with information on the agricultural situation in France, on like-minded organizations that operate in the country, as well as with background information about the Meatrix series. Please send us any information or updates you feel should be added to Giuseppina Pagano at gpagano@fwwatch.org.
Family Farms Go Industrial
After World War II, most European countries faced dire challenges to meet the demand for food. To increase farm output, new production methods were introduced and ancestral techniques such as crop rotation and combined production were improved. These changes enabled most of Europe to feed itself by the 1960s.
Like its neighbors, France aggressively implemented these new practices. Though many jobs were eliminated due to modernization and mechanization, these losses were compensated by rapid growth in the industry
As the 1970s arrived, agricultural production faced major changes and challenges. The era of industrialization had come to France, following the lead of Northern Europe.
Before this transformation, yields were improved mainly by mechanization and better land management, which reduced production costs and boosted farm revenue. But when the agro-industry began to exert itself, farmers became increasingly dependent on both upstream services, such as chemicals, seeds and veterinary services; and downstream services, including processing and retailing.
Production costs increased as farmers invested in more sophisticated techniques, while agro-industry giants drove down prices by manufacturing value-added products from basic farm outputs.
To cope with high infrastructure costs and low prices, farmers faced constant pressure to produce more in order to stay afloat. Banks, cooperatives and “industry partners” pushed farmers to choose industrialized production methods that obliged them to invest heavily in technology and produce cheap raw materials for the food industry. Thus, a cruel trap was set.
Family Farms at the Core of Industrialized Agriculture
In a sad irony, industrialized livestock operations in France are mainly in the hands of families struggling to make ends meet. Some regret their choice to industrialize, as the work is thankless and revenues are low. Yet they have little choice but to continue, in order to pay off their huge debts.
Agribusiness corporations exploit this system through contract farming, a scheme under which they impose prices and methods of production while not assuming any production risks. Prominent examples are poultry giant Groupe Doux and Société Bretonne de Salaisons, a subsidiary of US meat conglomerate Smithfield. These and other large corporations have signed contracts with thousands of French farmers, primarily in Bretagne.
Environmental Problems Plague the Northwest
The environmental ravages of concentrated livestock production are especially pronounced in Bretagne, where more than half of France’s pigs are raised. Citizens there suffer from numerous problems.
Nitrate levels are so high that many people can no longer drink their tap water. Coastal areas of this highly touristed region are threatened by pollution. And odors are sometimes unbearable for local communities. Bretagne has begun to implement restrictions but they have merely driven industrialized livestock operations into neighboring Normandie and Pays de la Loire.
Sending Jobs Overseas Transnational companies and even some cooperatives are starting to move processing abroad to further cut costs. Comparably high wages and often-strict environmental regulations are applying upward pressure on production costs, and large corporations are starting to sense the benefits of lower costs and friendly governments in the developing world, particularly in countries where animal feed is cheap and readily available.
Doux, for example, is progressively abandoning its European contractors and moving some operations to Brazil, which is already one of the world’s leading meat producers and exporters. This exerts even more downward pressure on prices paid to domestic farmers. Either they match these lower import prices by resorting to still more industrialized modes of production, or their corporate “client” can unilaterally break their contracts.
Domestic farmers in France are facing the harshest truth in today’s globalized agricultural industry: industrialized production, not rooted to a particular region, can move anytime to another country where costs are lower and regulation more lax.
