Mid-May has just passed, the fine weather is setting in for good and a downpour has moistened the land: this is the ideal picture to launch the buckwheat sowing season. Like every year since 2006, Christine Larsonneur, director of the Blé noir tradition Bretagne (BNTB) association, was getting ready to start these spring festivities. But his organization, which has managed the cultivation, storage and transformation of seed into flour since 1987 in Brittany, feared the worst.
“We were 30% short of growers compared to last yearshe acknowledges. Speculation on the prices of soft wheat, sunflower or rapeseed is so strong, due to the international context, that some have abandoned buckwheat for what they consider more profitable. » Not to mention that Russia and Ukraine are on the podium of the world’s largest producers of buckwheat, along with China.
Paradoxical situation
So, faced with the risk of shortage, Christine Larsonneur pulled out all the stops: a call to growers on social networks and in the press to try the adventure of BNTB buckwheat, which has a protected geographical indication and a strict charges. Seventy people out of the 150 needed responded on May 11. The goal ? Avoid that, at the end of the line, the crêpe makers run out of flour.
URGENT: we are looking for buckwheat producers to safeguard our Breton agriculture and a production… https://t.co/yaNZPIsXqE
A paradoxical situation in a region that has long hosted a large part of French buckwheat production, after its introduction in the 15the century. In the 1860s, half of the 740,000 hectares of buckwheat grown in France was in Brittany. Nicknamed buckwheat, this flowering plant of the Polygonaceae family supported many homes. Intensive agriculture, fluctuating and lower yields of buckwheat compared to wheat or corn almost wiped out its presence in the 1980s. Result: today, more than 70% of buckwheat consumed in France is imported.
According to the regional directorate for food, agriculture and forests, some 5,000 hectares were cultivated in Brittany in 2020 out of just over 43,000 in France. In his flour mill in Ploërmel (Morbihan), the talkative manager, Jean-Julien Genest, has been worried for a long time: “It’s been two years since I’ve had trouble getting supplies of French buckwheat. » Its large industrial customers have only recently become interested in the origin of buckwheat: “Before, the origin did not matter to them, but now they all ask for French buckwheat. We are overwhelmed! » In order to make up for the shortage, he himself reserved 1,000 hectares of land for the production of this cereal for his crepe maker customers.
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