No less than eight “blocking points” on major highways around Paris are planned by the FNSEA and the Young Farmers (JA) this Monday, with the slogan a “siege” of the capital, without time limit. To the point of creating significant traffic difficulties, or even worse, of preventing the region from being supplied with food? To avoid this, the government immediately reacted as soon as these blockages were announced, announcing that 15,000 members of the police would be mobilized to prevent tractors from entering “Paris and other large cities”. The Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin even gave “instructions” to “guarantee that tractors do not go to Paris and large cities so as not to create extremely serious difficulties”, and also to ensure that the Rungis international market “can operate as well as the Parisian airports of Orly and Roissy”.
“We are not here to starve the French since we want to have the honor of feeding them,” assured the president of the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions (FNSEA). Semmaris, responsible for administering the Rungis market and organizing its commercial activities, affirms that the activity of this international institution – which markets 2.8 million tonnes of products each year for a total turnover of 10 billion euros – has so far not been affected by the mobilization of farmers. As of this Monday morning, the Val-de-Marne prefecture decided to put in place a protocol to protect the site by “controlling who entered the market”, causing “slight slowdowns of around 5 minutes of waiting » but nothing that could prevent the institution from functioning normally. “The buyers came, the wholesalers sold,” we insist internally.
“As we speak, the situation is a little vague,” concedes the president of the Union of Hotel Trades and Industries (Umih) Île-de-France Frank Delvau this Monday morning, ensuring “to remember the words of Arnaud Rousseau who promises not to want to block Rungis”. “For the moment, I have the impression that trucks can enter and leave Rungis. However, the situation should not get worse,” believes this catering professional, who is worried, if not about a possible blockage of Rungis, about the economic consequences that this crisis could have on his sector. “This morning, things were moving very well on the ring road at a time when it is normally blocked (…) Travel to Paris risks being canceled, this is very bad for restaurateurs and small business owners who are at the end of the month with salaries and rents to pay”, he fears, and this, in a context “where activity was already complicated in January with the climate and the snow”. “If Rungis were blocked tomorrow, it would be worrying. We all have a little stock but not enough to last,” he concludes.
So will farmers’ banners reading “our end will be your hunger” be signs of future shortages? “Given the security forces deployed, it would surprise me if Rungis was blocked,” said the general secretary of the Agromer union Bruno Gauvain, who specified “not having too much information at this time on the blockage or not” of this “strategic” site. According to him, restaurateurs or retail traders could be “the most affected”, while mass distribution has “other distribution channels”. “After three days of blockage, this could start to pose a problem, especially in the tidal sector,” admits the professional.
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“I have been working in Rungis for 34 years and I have never seen the market blocked, the public authorities have always been attentive,” also said the president of the Union of fruit and vegetable wholesalers at the Rungis market, Jérôme. Desmit, on franceinfo this weekend. “I hope that the public authorities will find a solution for our farmer friends throughout France with whom we stand in solidarity. We are on their side,” he insisted. And if he recognizes that Rungis is “the belly of Paris”, through which 60% of the products distributed in France pass, choosing to block this site would, according to him, be “not the right one”, “because blocking Rungis is blocking the distribution of fruits and vegetables, particularly those coming from France. “Rungis is a symbol”, but “we must not make the wrong target, it will not do the sector any favors (…) We only have very little stock, we cannot hold on for very long”, he recalled.
Also read Blockade of Paris: previous acts of force by farmers in the capital
Asked about the food dependence of the Ile-de-France region, the Paris Region Institute recalls that Île-de-France “only has around 5,000 farms on its territory” (according to 2020 figures) for more than 12 .2 million mouths to feed. “Our food system is unbalanced, marked by the disproportion between the size of the consumption basin and the number of farmers, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, by the lack of direct links between the actors of production, processing, distribution and transport,” wrote agronomist Laure de Biasi in a note written in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis. “In two centuries, the population has multiplied by twenty while the supply distance has multiplied by four,” she writes again, estimating that “in the event of a supply disruption, Paris would only have three days of autonomy according to Ademe”.
“Our production of wheat and salad, for example, largely covers our needs. On the other hand, it is less than 10% of our needs for fruits and vegetables, around 1% for meat and milk,” she continues, referring to a Utopies study carried out in 2017, which states that the capital “does not would only be self-sufficient to the extent of 1.27%. Far behind cities like Avignon, Valence, Nantes or Angers, which share the podium and display a food autonomy of between 6 and a little more than 8%. But if the capital region’s food dependence is a reality, it would certainly take a severe crisis, greater than those of Covid-19 or the war in Ukraine, to undermine its supply.
