On Friday, April 26, tomato growers affiliated with Légumes de France took action in the supermarkets of Agen and Bon-Encontre. The reason is the lack of visibility on products from Morocco and the denunciation of unfair competition.
It is 10 a.m. at the Intermarché in Bon-Encontre, Friday April 26, customers are pouring into the store. Tomato growers are mobilizing in the fruit and vegetable sector.
“We are being asked to make increasingly cleaner tomatoes with labor of €13 per hour while at the same time we import Moroccan products for less than €1 per hour and with chemical products,” protests Jonas Hollaar, producer in Bias and member of the Légumes de French association . To show their dissatisfaction, they pasted yellow labels with the inscription “Origine Maroc”.
“We are in the middle of the campaign for the European elections. Politicians need to understand how fed up we are. We must stop bringing in products, we must regain our food sovereignty in France and in Europe,” thunders the original producer of Bias. The latter produces 10,000 kg per year.
A lack of clarity
#BalanceTonOrigine is starting to blossom on social networks to expose this unfair competition. On site, in the Bon-Encontre supermarket, customers follow one another in the aisle where the dark red tomatoes face each other between those from Morocco and France. Further on, cherry tomatoes from both countries are placed next to each other in bowls.
“Here we can hardly distinguish the French origin,” says Jonas Hollaar, as he takes a container of French origin in his hand. To be able to coordinate, we cannot make packaging such as the Moroccan containers. The customer does not always pay attention and logically turns to that of Morocco. We ask for a large display with the origin of the product, a flag or the name. From now on, the yellow sticker leaves no doubt. Faced with unrest, tomatoes from the Maghreb are neglected.
“I usually go to the market. There I am in a hurry, it is true that we cannot tell the difference between the two. I try to prefer French as much as possible,” confesses a customer.
A general has had enough
Danielle, an 83-year-old retiree, calls on producers to congratulate them: “The farmers are starving. We must give priority to France, it is our producers who must have priority. I have worked in the fields, I know what that means.”
The purpose of this action is not to target a particular brand, but to warn consumers. The producers then continued their tour of the city’s supermarkets.
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