What levers exist to increase the french agriculture and agrifood sectors' competitiveness ?

Visuel
What levers exist to increase the french agriculture and agrifood sectors' competitiveness ?
Type of text :
Opinion and report
Type of referral :
Own initiative
Working group :
Section for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
Date d'adoption
Date adopted : 01/24/2018
Rapporteur(s) :
Photo
Jacques PASQUIER
Qualified individual
    Overview
    Présentation
     
    Farming and the agrifood industry have long been of key importance to the French economy. Nonetheless, although the sector’s trade balance is still positive at national level (€6.1 billion in 2016), it is decreasing with every passing year, with major disparities between branches. The present context is characterised by highly competitive agricultural markets, including within the European Union, along with a price war in which France’s mass retailers and major agrifood groups are involved, resulting in unequal distribution of added value within a number of sector branches.
     
    Competitiveness is too often reduced to a question of price although it actually incorporates highly diverse parameters resulting from new expectations on the part of society and consumers. The opinion defines this as “the agricultural and agrifood sectors’ ability to provide healthy, top-quality food, meeting the needs and expectations of consumers, citizens, and, more generally, society, in particular with regard to health and preservation and renewal of natural resources, at socially acceptable prices and whose produced value enables fair remuneration of work”.