JGDE. Messieurs BIZIEN and ROUÉ, you both co-chair the GIE Pig Breeders in France, which includes Aveltis and Prestor, this union makes you one of the market leaders. What are your missions and ambitions?
The fragmentation of the sales forces at the end of pig farms is a handicap which had to be fixed. This is why Aveltis and Prestor have chosen to regroup their forces within the GIE Pig Breeders in France. The goal being to better meet the expectations of our customers in slaughterhouses and to better organise the marketing in order to get the right price. Being the main actor of the Breton Pork Market, we participate in the development of the public award, guarantee of equity between breeders.
We encourage contractual links between breeders and slaughterhouses. These innovative contracts make it possible to smooth the cash flow of livestock farms in a volatile market such as that of pork and raw materials. Our ambition is to serve the best interests of our breeders who are ambitious entrepreneurs that want the colors of Bretagne to be worn as high as possible.
JGDE. The regional fact for the construction of Europe does not in any way exclude competition or competitiveness. In the context of ubiquitous regulation, how do you apprehend an increasingly liberal and often mature market economy?
The daily struggle of the entrepreneur is his cost price. It is also that of Pig Breeders in France. In the pig sector, one could imagine that Europe after 70 years of existence of the CAP has managed to harmonise its tax, social, environmental and societal rules between all the member countries. At this stage, this is not the case. Bretagne is and must remain at the forefront of the fight to harmonise European rules. Agriculture is the foundation of our economy, it is our constant struggle and that of our agricultural and political bodies.
Today, markets are almost all mature, and despite OECD forecasts that meat consumption will increase by 50% by 2050, it is known that the capacity to produce will follow throughout the world. We must therefore fight to keep our place on the export market.
JGDE. Geopolitics and the impact on the development of your markets. How to improve your positions?
We are never immune to big surprises. For example, the emergence of African swine fever in some Eastern European countries has been catastrophic because immediately the Russian market has closed for all EU trade. This episode, which should have been settled simply by applying the sanitary protocol that governs EU-Russia trade relations, was polluted by the general embargo set up after the problem with the Crimea. The European and Russian health authorities have never found an acceptable consensus. It is not the technical problems that get in the way, but geopolitical interests. We have the feeling that we are the collateral victims of issues that go beyond us because guided by geo strategy with political as well as economic stakes. Europe must be united in order to face together the challenges of tomorrow’s trade, whether they are on the American continent or on the vast Asian market. Indeed, in the conquest of the immense Chinese market nothing should divide us on a European scale, from France and our region. Regalian problems must be remitted. Our American competitors do not encumber much philosophy when it comes to doing business. Regarding our GIE Pig Breeders in France, we are convinced that the union is the strength.
