Out of breath, they can no longer cope: the new call for help from Gard winegrowers

MPs, senators, departmental councilors and mayors listen to issues. Midi Libre – D.R.

Normative inflation, unfair competition, rising costs, or even falling sales prices and volumes sold…hellip;. Faced with the constraints, the department's wine producers called, this Friday, April 26, in Saint Génies-de-Malgoirès, for strong intervention from their local elected officials and parliamentarians.

Bloodless, the wine world is now awaiting support measures that are both concrete and very rapid. In particular to avoid further excesses. At the initiative of the committee of local wine growers, parliamentarians, departmental councilors and mayors of the Gard department were invited Friday 26  April at a meeting in front of the cooperative cellar of Saint-Geniès-de-Malgoirès.

During this meeting, discussions between elected officials and wine growers were heated. The hundred people present notably discussed the problems that are accumulating for the wine sector, the sector currently undergoing a crisis not seen since the 1970s.

In a note addressed to parliamentarians, the winegrowers' committee set out all these factors which, according to them, clearly threaten their sector. Whether it is the fall in prices and volumes sold, unfair competition with normative inflation, or even the increase in fees for cooperative cellars.

Prefectural meeting

By its next meeting with the prefect of Gard scheduled for next month, the committee is already asking for a real export policy for French wines, measures to encourage the installation of young people, or even strengthening controls on imports. 

These professionals who want to make a living from their work wish to begin a constructive dialogue with businesses and distributors, and meet partners likely to facilitate the short-term management of their problems (insurance companies, banks, MSA).

Mobilized to report dysfunctions and anomalies to the State, they denounce with one voice the social and economic distress in which they find themselves plunged , as well as their families. 

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