While the price of flour soars, industry professionals denounce a measure “demagogic and destructive of values”
The whole wheat industry was indignant on Wednesday at the launch by the Leclerc group of a baguette at 0.29 euros, denouncing a campaign “demagogic and destructive of values”.
Michel-Edouard Leclerc announced on Tuesday that he was blocking the price of the baguette in the group’s stores at 29 euro cents for at least four months, in the name of of the defense of the purchasing power of the French.
“Prices destroying values”
A declaration of war for the entire wheat sector. Cereal growers, millers and bakers, as well as the FNSEA, the first agricultural union, denounced in a joint press release “prices that willfully destroy values”.
They are indignant at a “demagogic” announcement when “the prices of cereals and consequently of flour, are experiencing high prices, that production costs (wages, etc.) are rising sharply and that the average price of the baguette, in France in 2021 according to INSEE is 0.90 euros ”.
A tense context
“We are trying to preserve jobs and quality, that comes at a cost: we have to pay the actors correctly, those who plant, who harvest, who assemble the grains and make the flour, and those who make the bread. What Leclerc is doing is shameful, ”declared Jean-François Loiseau, president of the National Association of French Mining, to Jean-François Loiseau.
“Mr. Leclerc will have to explain to us how and how much he pays bakers with a baguette at 29 cents”, reacted for his part Christiane Lambert, patron of the FNSEA. In addition, Leclerc “breaks prices” in the particularly tense context of annual negotiations between producers and distributors, underline the players in the sector.
Michel-Edouard Leclerc did not hide it: “The flour suppliers have often invoked the increase in the price of wheat, to ask for considerable increases”, he declared on Tuesday on BFMTV, defending his choice on a ” flagship product ”,“ inflation marker ”.
