“The French farmers who could be most affected by the ratification of the agreement with Mercosur are producers of meat, sugar beets and honey”
the world guest Marc Dufumier, agronomist and honorary professor at AgroParisTech, to share his analysis and answer some of your questions in this live broadcast.
Why is the EU-Mercosur agreement crystallizing the anger of French farmers? On the contrary, what are the benefits of this treaty according to its defenders, particularly the EU? What makes free trade agreements still considered attractive, at the price we know in terms of environmental, health and social standards?
“French farmers have many reasons to fear the ratification of the EU-Mercosur agreement, knowing that they are much less competitive on the world market than the large farmers of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. They have already been burned by previous agreements, such as the so-called Blair House agreement, signed with the United States in November 1992.
The commitment not to impose tariff barriers or quotas on the import of protein crops very quickly gave rise to massive imports of soybean seeds and meals from the Americas. And today we pay dearly for this dependence on vegetable proteins for animal feed. A cost that is not only monetary but also environmental.
Because we produce much less alfalfa, clover, lupine and broad bean, all crops that had the effect of fertilizing our soils with nitrogen organically, we are now forced to resort to synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, which are very expensive in fossil terms. fuels and high emitters of nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas. Added to this is the fact that our soy imports have contributed to deforestation and the deforestation of forested savannahs in Brazil (certainly in smaller proportions than Chinese imports).
The French farmers who could be most affected by the ratification of the agreement are producers of meat (beef and poultry), sugar beets and honey. Those who could benefit, however, are the producers of wines, cheeses and spirits, in particular thanks to the recognition by agreement of a large number of our protected designations of origin.
As for the people of the Mercosur countries, is it really in their best interest to see their surplus soybeans feeding French pigs when poor Brazilians confined to slums can barely buy anything, due to lack of purchasing power? Should we really also deprive them of meat because Europeans seem to be able to buy it more expensively?
The only true defenders of this agreement seem to be industrialists and those who want the public markets of the Mercosur countries to be opened to European companies and not Chinese ones. »
Read also |
