It seems like the world is going to hell in a handbasket! I have been a farmer since the age of 14, and I feel like most of our world leaders have gotten crazier, more oblivious and more irresponsible! Agriculture is my passion, as it is for my fellow combatants and comrades. We mobilise to strengthen producer power upstream and marketing practices downstream with Fair Milk (such as FaireFrance in France), so that a maximum number of farms make it to tomorrow, in all regions. And yes, we must remain because our profession is indispensable to life itself. We are at the heart of everyone’s health and well-being, we nourish life by ensuring three meals a day. And we also strive to shape our environment, our landscapes - in essence, our living space that perhaps we take too much for granted as we constantly inhabit it. All this to say that our profession is everywhere in daily life, and too many forget that, starting with our decision-makers.

We as citizens shoulder a massive responsibility, but when our leaders’ decisions are so far-removed from the reality on the ground, things become complicated, especially when citizens stop speaking up! We need to get out of this resigned state and recentre discussions on the lived reality of farmers and the threats to our food supply!

I am part of a European organisation called the European Milk Board (EMB) that was created to advocate for decent remuneration of European producers so that they will still be around tomorrow. To this aim, we constantly put forth policy proposals like supply regulation (Market Responsibility Programme, MRP) to obtain prices that cover production costs (this is even done in the oil sector as well when prices are too low): we haven’t invented anything new! A production surplus of just a few percent compared to consumption and prices plummet. The EMB also produces calculations of real production costs for all producers because the so-called majority organisations (often linked to large farmers’ unions) are completely disconnected and act more like certain journalists who have also lost the plot! You have to be competitive, so they invent figures that give this impression, except that on the ground everyone is suffocating and ends up throwing in the towel!

Our organisation is constantly lobbying to explain that we need to strengthen the position of farmers, and we need to stop treating them like an adjustment variable! Our decision-makers are fine with the low prices we receive because it allows consumers to eat for cheap, but mainly because the intermediate stages of the value chain comfortably profit off the fruits of our hard labour. But this isn’t sustainable over time.

And there’s another massive downside! A robust agricultural sector is also synonymous with, first and foremost, food security and our self-sufficiency in terms of a healthy diet, our ability to respect and shape the environment we live in and to avoid the increasing number of fires across France and even in northern Europe due to lack of maintenance and natural firebreaks! Canadairs can try to put out fires but grazing, the natural maintenance of pastures by our cows, sheep, goats and other animals, avoids blazes in the first place! And please don’t tell me that it’s impossible to revive these agricultural sectors because lamb mainly comes from very far away! We seem to have lost common sense, and everything is out of whack. Consuming local is not a priority anymore. We are fighting tirelessly to ensure that our leaders enforce common-sense rules to reinstate this balance, to force everyone to understand that food is about more than just short-term survival! If we become dependent on others for our food, we will not only see more homes burnt to the ground – we will see prices, quality and food availability suffer significantly.

Neither a few subsidies nor some payments (including from the CAP) will solve things! What we need is a true political vision for us farmers, but for you consumers as well. We need a radical, rapid implementation of tools and laws like a ban on sale below production costs and production regulation! The collusion between our cooperatives, farmers’ unions and professional agricultural organisations must be challenged and eradicated – it is a gangrene that has done nothing but deteriorate relations between us all. Just a few producer organisations, structured across agricultural sectors and not vertically, negotiating prices should be the norm if we are to stop farmers from competing against each other.

If the prices for our foodstuffs and especially for milk were to always cover our production costs, we could easily survive a year of drought or bad weather. We are still waiting for our leaders to be willing to take up real production cost calculations, which include a safety margin for such eventualities.

And finally, our policy-makers should oblige retailers to promote less processed and especially fair products where the farmer has the final word.

What I have just described should be the norm and should constitute the foundation for our governments’ work. We remain at the ready to help them achieve it!

To end with a quote:

When things are good, everything goes well.

When agriculture suffers, the end is in sight.

Or as Thomas Jefferson put it in a letter to George Washington on 14 August 1787: “Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness.”

Boris Gondouin, EMB Vice President and active member of FaireFrance Fair Milk