From farmers to bakers, the entire 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 – or even up to 23 cents – for at least four months, in the name of the defense of power purchasing by the French in an inflationary context.
A declaration of war for the entire wheat sector. Cereal growers, millers and bakers, as well as the FNSEA, the leading agricultural union, denounced in a joint press release “Prices that deliberately destroy values”.
“What Leclerc is doing is shameful”
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 than the average baguette price, in France in 2021 according to INSEE is 0.90 euro ”.
This announcement, which comes at a time when the sectors and the government “are working to fairly remunerate farmers” and when “the know-how and the quality of the French baguette are in the process of being recognized by UNESCO”, provoked an outcry.
“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, ”Jean-François Loiseau, president of the National Association of French Mining, told AFP.
A tense context for producers
“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. While wheat prices have increased by around 30% in one year, Jean-François Loiseau wonders “where the Leclerc group buys its flour” and “on which products it will compensate”.
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 BFM-TV, defending his choice on a “flagship”, “inflation marker”, as it had done for fuel a few months ago.