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| From farm to table – a network, not a chain |
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| Wednesday, 16 April 2008 | |
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Oliver Taylor meets the founder of Paysans online, a farmer- and customer-friendly business supplying quality food from Marmande  Patricia Juthiaud is an idealist – but with her feet firmly on the ground. Living in the Lot-et-Garonne for 30 years, she is very familiar with the increasing problem faced by the small agricultural producer: the supermarket chains fix the buying prices, well below the cost of production, then sell to the public at enormous mark-up. Apart from local village markets, the farmer can’t find a practical way of selling his quality food to enough customers at a realistic price. Result: more and more frustration and good producers being gradually forced out of business, while the discriminating public has to make do with mass-produced food. No surprise that recently some market gardeners protested by dumping 3,000 heads of lettuce in the streets of Marmande (47) to greet a ministerial visit. Rather than accept this situation, in December 2002, Patricia, with a few friends developed an existing farmers’ collective into a new organisation (a small, limited company with no outside finance, rather than a non-profit association) using the power of the internet to link small farm producers with customers across France, under the very apt name ‘Paysans.fr.’ The network has more than 100 carefully chosen producers, mostly in the South-West, as partners signed up to a charter which promotes quality, bio-diversity, respect for the environment and personal involvement of the individual farmer at all stages. The aim is to enable them to live a satisfying and independent life while providing healthy, varied and tasty food to the widest possible range of customers. Now a highly professional business, operating at a warehouse outside Marmande, and centres on a well-designed website with an office staff of only three. There are more than 8,000 customers on the books, who place their regular orders online based on hampers, each designed to provide a week’s woth of varied and balanced menus for different sizes of households. The contents change from week to week according to what’s in season – all the food has to be fresh – and can be tailored to individual preferences. Each week, the producers (except for the few who are too far away) bring the material for these orders in reusable packaging to the warehouse, where it goes at once into refrigerated storage. Then a team of préparateurs sets to work, assembling the individual hampers from customers’ online orders and grouping them by delivery area. Everything is promptly delivered door-to-door: their own three refrigerated lorries cover the Grand Sud-ouest, while delivery subcontractors operate over other parts of France, including Paris and Île-de-France, Lille, Lyon, Saint-Étienne and the South-East (Nice, Monaco, Toulon and Marseille). Their impressive range of products includes meat, poultry, fish, fruit, vegetables, dairy products, drinks and all sorts of conserves – even a few cooked dishes – in a list that specifies origin and methods. Of course, there is an emphasis on organic, now up to 80% of the total, but Patricia insists that it has to be quality (“bon bio”) as the label isn’t a guarantee on its own. Prices are worked out from the agreed cost of production by a standard tariff which covers handling and delivery: for example, the grower gets E0.42 for a lettuce, 40% on top of his E0.30 costs (to encourage investment in quality), and it’s then sold at E1.02 including delivery. Compare that with the supermarkets which buy lettuces at E0.10 to E0.20 each and sell them at E1.20 in the store, or as much as E1.76 plus delivery from online cybermarchés! Paysans.fr prices for producer and customer have remained stable, and what’s more, any new product goes first to a group of customers for vetting, and is only put on the list if it gets at least 70% approval rating. Success shows in the annual turnover – about a million euros at present and growing by 15% to 20% a year. And the future? Patricia says that other regions could well want to follow her example, perhaps in some sort of alliance, while the restaurant trade has shown interest in what’s on offer – but she counsels caution, to make sure the founding principles behind her network are respected. www.paysans.fr, 08 25 88 78 05 |
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