In October 2018, a law to help farmers was adopted in France: the EGalim law to balance commercial relations between the farming and food sectors and to secure healthy and affordable food. According to the EGalim law (États Généraux de l’Alimentation = Estates General of Food), all French farmers were supposed to, at long last, receive fair prices – prices that cover their full production costs. To achieve this, a contract must be signed between producers – or more often their cooperatives – processors and retailers. Up to this point, the members of the EMB could agree with this law, especially when the President of the Republic, who initiated this process, said that the starting point would be our production costs. Bravo! Finally, a president who gets it and is going to fix things.

But there’s a little hitch: who sets the production costs? It would be pointless to explain that in this case, it’s not the farmers but the sector, or rather the interbranch organisation. For milk production in France, it’s the CNIEL (Centre National Interprofessionnel de l’Économie Laitière), the “milk centre”. Unfortunately, it has to be said that this organisation has never worked in the interest of family farms. The response is always that our cooperatives are very active, that they represent us very well and hence they can sign off on our behalf. It’s probably not necessary for me to go into the topic of cooperatives and especially what most of them have become... In short, it is impossible to overlook that the contractual model was badly designed from the start.

We would have thought that our elected representatives, who, in theory, want the best for us, would intervene among all these stakeholders to protect the first link in the chain that has today become the weakest one: us farmers. But it seems like that’s too much to ask! To date, our elected representatives have not lifted a finger – they do not demand any transparency from those who pocket the profits at our cost. What’s even worse, projects that would like to provide prices that are above the EGalim threshold are obliged by the government to join a certification body by paying them a large sum every year under the pretext that these bodies would ensure that our prices are not too far above the market price. How shameful! What is this world we live in?

The idea of Fair Milk was born at the EMB not in 2018, but as early as 2010, first in Austria, and now exists in Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland... If you look at the specifics, this project is really quite similar to the EGalim law: the brand is farmer-owned, the price is fixed by farmers, contracts are signed with them – the real people who do the real work day in and day out, throughout the year. It permits producers to regain real autonomy and motivation, thus doubling our effort and renewing strong relations with the consumers who buy our products.

So, ladies and gentlemen, policy-makers in all governments in Europe: please don’t even consider implementing an EGalim law in all countries, and even less so “minimum prices”. This would be admitting defeat given that there is absolutely no political will for a fair distribution of profits among all.

It would probably take a real miracle for politicians to rethink at long last. It would be better instead to promote our concept of Fair Milk whenever and wherever you can. Just make sure it’s the real deal, the one that belongs to farmers and not to cooperatives, nor processors, nor retailers and even less so to those who see this as yet another way to make some easy money. Oh, and while you’re at it, could you help us develop this concept for other agricultural sectors as well? We remain at your disposal to help you solve this crisis that has lasted for too long now.

It’s agriculture with its farmers that should persist, not this crisis!

Boris Gondouin, EMB Executive Committee Member from France in charge of Fair Milk