At the time when the Clermont-Ferrand breeding summit opens on Tuesday, October 4, a large gathering where professionals and politicians will discuss food sovereignty and the sustainability of livestock sectors, three organizations dissect, in a joint report, the impact of export channels to third countries, i.e. outside the European Union (EU). This survey by Réseau action climat (RAC), Oxfam and Greenpeace shows that part of the French production sectors are geared towards the export of products with low added value, to countries where they can destabilize local markets, particularly in Africa. and in Asia.
The report focuses on three sectors in particular – milk, pork and poultry – those where the share of exports is the largest (respectively 42%, 39% and 25%, including exports to other European countries). To understand the weight of trade with non-EU countries, it is necessary to go into detail by product category: frozen chicken cuts, pork offal or fat, skimmed milk powder, etc. It is mainly these undervalued products that France exports outside the borders of the EU. The analysis of trade flows is complex: the associations show that these low-end segments dedicated to exports are growing, at the same time as France imports more and more products with higher added value.
“Total inconsistency”
“The first lesson is that France’s trade balance is plummeting, overall, and in particular in agricultureobserves Cyrielle Denhartigh, agriculture and food manager at RAC. If it were not driven by wines and spirits, France’s agricultural trade balance would be negative. Exports with higher added value are decreasing, while those that focus on volumes are increasing. I was very surprised to see that in the milk sector, the main export product is not cheese, but milk powder. »
The limits of the French commercial model are illustrated with the figures for the poultry sector: a third of the poultry consumed in France is imported, but France exports whole frozen chickens to Africa, or cut pieces that European consumers appreciate less, such as wings. The trend is the same in the pork industry, where part of the French consumption is imported from Spain or Germany, while co-products with low added value, such as pork fat, are sent to China and the Philippines. .
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