The uprooting of the vines will be able to begin. The Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau and the representatives of Bordeaux wines signed on Monday the release of aid for the uprooting of part of the vineyard, in the grip of a serious crisis of overproduction, at the end of a meeting with winegrowers in “distress”.
This envelope of 57 million euros, co-financed by the State and the Bordeaux Wine Interprofessional Committee (CIVB), must allow the “sanitary” uprooting of around 9,500 hectares of vines, with a premium of 6,000 euros per hectare. , in order to fight as a preventive measure against flavescence dorée, a disease that threatens abandoned vines.
Support for the diversification of production
The State mobilized 38 million euros and the CIVB released 19 million, including 14 million taken from a loan, to finance this plan which indirectly makes it possible to reduce production volumes. The Regional Council of New Aquitaine adds 10 million euros to help “at least 300 winegrowers” to diversify their productions.
This plan, “even if it is insufficient in several respects”, must be put in place “as quickly as possible” because “the latest figures on consumption in France show that things are getting worse”, alerted the vice- President of the CIVB Bernard Farges during a meeting in Sallebœuf (Gironde) with the Minister and around thirty representatives of winegrowers testifying to “cries of distress” locally.
More than one in three winegrowers in difficulty
In the leading AOC vineyard in France, with 110,000 hectares of cultivated vines, the less prestigious appellations are suffering from a collapse in prices and overproduction estimated at one million hectolitres. In January, more than one out of three Girondin winegrowers declared themselves in difficulty with the Chamber of Agriculture. For Didier Cousiney, from the Viti 33 collective, which is calling for the uprooting of at least 15,000 hectares, with a premium of 10,000 euros per hectare, “we are not in crisis, we are at war. Urgent decisions have to be made because in some time the Girondin landscape will be disfigured, denatured”.
These aids do not represent “a balance of all accounts”, replied Marc Fesneau, paving the way for subsidized loans to “be collectively offensive” for export. He also promised “at the European level” an upcoming device for distilling surpluses, in order to reduce volumes “to deal with this crisis which is a consumer crisis”. A dozen anti-pesticide activists, armed with saucepans, waited unsuccessfully for the minister when he left the meeting.