000 bretons Norman Auvergne savoyards

At what level and what methods should be fixed the price of milk sold by some producers (farmers) 103.000 bretons, Norman, Auvergne, savoyards (...) to the industrial transformers, often large groups As a result of the Government (the Attali Commission was passed by this), this question there are more intelligible response since April 2008. The unions of farmers still come to call their members to protest this week their anger against the "diktat" of their customers, manufacturers, whose trucks are intercepted.

Person, and this is where the only consoling element of this sad and significant case, sees this new jacquerie as a "backward" revolt The stakes are high even though, in terms of individual income, their amounts are miserable. The possession of a herd of approximately 70 dairy cows earns little more to the owner and operator, and often less than approximately 1,100 euros a month. It is the credibility of the policy of competition, with full muddle, then that has to be put in place the competition authority (she succeeds the "Board" of the same name), to put the France "in tune with the other major countries of the OECD". It is in the excesses of globalization and the potential means to them.

Also a volatility aggravated prices (proper and, when they can, by major market players), the regulators, yet responsible for ensuring their proper functioning, came to judging itself suspect any existence of a single market price. Of course, it may be that this is the index of an interprofessional agreement. But this does not preclude that it is also, normally, the effect logic and principal of a healthy competition between vendors. Where is the advantage of competition if I pay more than my neighbour

Further complication: converging price scales are so in the order of things that, when a market is unable to produce this result, often actors seek together to make up for this failure. Through, for example, contracts spread over several months, if not several years. For many farmers, milk sales are the only permanent source of cash. Until April 2008, their Union representatives were negotiating with those processors a sort of national award for direction for the current quarter. This practice had to be abandoned. The Directorate-General competition, consumption and the repression of fraud (DGCCRF), an administrative part (not to be confused with the above mentioned authority), announced itself on that date the decision to prohibit, on the grounds that it constitutes an agreement. An agreement where everyone is unhappy! Despite, or because of the silence of the guardianship Minister, Christine Lagarde, the signal was strong: this administration French guardian of the new competition to the American fetish style junior Bush and Clinton. We do not wonder if the application is possible. In France, the producers deliver milk which they do not yet know price to industrialists who have not the right to determine the volume of their purchases. They are obliged to make the complete collection. This is the effect of the European quota system.

Two and a half years in the back, in the summer 2007, a strange euphoria reigns among producers. Prices are rising: 370 euros per 1,000 litres of milk, against 210 and less today. Global markets of butter and milk powder, or one quarter of the turnover of the industry, are seized of frenzy. According to experts, the reason is the "appetite" for emerging countries. Say universal appetite of speculation: in the world of volatility, any product a vocation to become... an investment property. The markets have turned, as for the oil. Industrialists now lose money on milk powder. They will catch up on the price of milk. No Government has the courage to make the decision necessary: book futures on raw to professionals, as was done for centuries.