For farmers, this is one of the main blind spots in Gabriel Attal's first announcements last Friday for the profession: the subject of
"unfair competition"
which they believe exists with foreign producers, subject to less strict standards, which would endanger France's food sovereignty.
The Prime Minister did not rule out additional measures on this issue, after declaring on Friday that he had asked to
“have, by the
Agricultural Show
, a precise report on the state of our food sovereignty and of our dependencies
.
The data of the problem are however known.
As noted in the latest report from the High Council for the Climate, which came at the right time last week amid the mobilization of farmers,
“France imports 20% of its food”
.
In billions of euros, French food imports have doubled since 2000. At the same time, exports have grown more slowly, increasing by a little more than 70%, according to the latest report from the High Commission for Planning.
“Ultimately, imports cover an increasingly significant share of the French diet
,” noted a report written in 2019 by Senator LR Laurent Duplomb.
In detail,
“
fruits and vegetables
and fish and shellfish are the products with the highest imported share”
, notes the latest report from the High Council for the Climate.
Overall, almost one in two fruits and vegetables consumed in France is now imported, compared to around a third twenty years ago.
A much larger share for fruits (71%) than for vegetables (28%).
No doubt this is partly explained by tropical fruits and citrus fruits, not produced in mainland France, and whose dependence on imports (i.e. the share of imports in apparent domestic consumption) reaches 103%, according to a report by FranceAgriMer published in April 2023.
This does not prevent certain
“
temperate
”
fruits and vegetables , which the French wish to have available all year round, from also being affected by a structural dependence on imports.
For example, if we take the most consumed fruits and vegetables in France, the imported share reaches 40 to 50% for tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini, according to an Ademe report dating from 2019. For fruits, Imports represent 39% for pears, more than 40% for peaches/nectarines and up to 74% for table grapes, apples being an exception as they are mainly produced in France.
“Almost half of fruit imports come from Spain, the Canary Islands, the Balearics and Italy;
the rest comes from very diverse, often distant areas (Africa, Latin America)
,” specifies Ademe.
Also read: Mercosur, Chile, Canada… These trade agreements that scare French farmers
“Rise in poultry imports from Eastern Europe”
Regarding fishing products,
“around three quarters of the volumes consumed are imported”
, mainly from Norway, reports FranceAgriMer (89% for fish alone).
“This phenomenon is reinforced by the fact that the French mainly consume fish (salmon, cod, tuna) or crustaceans (shrimp) not produced in France
,” explains the national establishment of agricultural and seafood products.
On the meat side, dependence on imports is particularly strong for sheep meat and chicken, with respectively 53% and 42% of products consumed in France coming from abroad, again according to FranceAgriMer.
The weight of chicken imports is increasing sharply, since it was 25% in 2000. A Senate report published in 2022 explains this in particular by
“the increase in imports of poultry from Eastern Europe, linked with the growth in out-of-home consumption, the supply of which is based on the importation of poultry cuts
.
“French imports of poultry meat from Poland have, for example, increased fivefold since 2010, making it France's leading supplier in this category
,” adds the High Commission for Planning.
For pork, a quarter of what is consumed in France (especially hams) is imported.
This production
“comes mainly from Spain or Germany, mainly as raw material intended for the processing industry”
, underlines the aforementioned Senate report.
For beef, it is a fifth of what is consumed.
“The beef sold in supermarkets is largely of French origin (93%), but more than half of the beef sold in restaurants is imported
,” notes the High Commission for Planning.
The Netherlands being the leading country of origin for imported beef.
Regarding dairy products, France
“imports a significant part of its apparent consumption”
, as noted by FranceAgriMer.
For example 40% of its butter or 36% of its cheese or cream.
However, at the same time it is
a “net exporter of dairy products”
.
“This is partly explained by a de facto unbalanced consumption between protein materials (surplus) and fats (deficit)
,” explains FranceAgriMer.
Also read: “The EU kills its cows, we import meat from Brazil, Mexico and India”: the rant of a farmer
France sovereign over cereals
Furthermore, although France is THE country of wine, FranceAgriMer reports that,
“in a rather unintuitive way, we see that, in volume, imports are of the same order as exports”
.
In fact, a quarter of the volumes of wine consumed in France come from abroad.
“France needs to stock up on more ordinary wine than that which it produces and which it mainly exports
,” explains the public establishment, with imported wine mainly coming from neighboring Spain.
Cereals seem to be the only agricultural products where France is generally sovereign: less than 10% of the soft wheat, wheat flour, barley or corn consumed in France comes from abroad.
With two notable exceptions: durum wheat on the one hand, largely imported (75%), mainly from Italy, because
“exported in the form of grain but largely imported in the form of processed products (dry pasta, semolina)”
.
Two thirds of the pasta consumed in France comes from abroad.
Second exception: rice, almost all of its consumption is imported.
Overall, for the main agricultural and agri-food products, France's dependence abroad mainly comes from EU countries.
“Our leading import supplier is most often a country in the European Union and primarily Spain (fruit and vegetables, wine, pork and poultry) followed by the northern countries (Belgium, Germany and especially the Netherlands). Bas)”
, observes FranceAgriMer.
Furthermore, the observation made is that of increasing imported consumption in recent years:
"For the vast majority of products studied, we see rather a deterioration, particularly marked for rapeseed and faba bean and to a lesser extent, dairy products (excluding cream and yogurt), sunflower and wine
,” indicates FranceAgriMer, which adds that,
“in the fruit and vegetable sector, only potatoes are experiencing a favorable development in their dependence on imports
. ”