Europe’s Farmers Feel the Weight of Russian Ban

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/world/europe/europes-farmers-feel-the-weight-of-russian-ban.html

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ANNECY, France — On Aug. 7, trucks carrying French cheese were turned away at the Russian border and forced to make a 1,240-mile return trip with fast-ripening cargoes of Brie, Camembert, Roquefort and other delicacies.

“The peculiarity of this decision was that it was put in place right away, from one day to the next,” lamented Johann Hugon, export manager for Fromi Rungis, a French cheese exporter that had to scramble to unload 10 tons of cheese. “We feel powerless.”

The French cheese business is just one sliver of the European agricultural market feeling the pain of a Russian ban on selected food products from the European Union, as well as the United States, Australia, Norway and Canada. The penalties were imposed as part of the struggle over the future of Ukraine.

In 2013, France exported 109 million euros, or $144 million, worth of dairy products — mostly cheese — to Russia, about 5 percent of all dairy exports. For Fromi Rungis, Russia accounted for 10 percent of its foreign sales.

Jean-Charles Arnaud, proprietor of Fromagerie Arnaud in Poligny, northeast of Lyon, is counting his losses. They include not only a truckload of 18 tons of cheese turned back at the Russian border but also years of work educating Russian consumers to appreciate Comté, Morbier, Mont d’Or and other specialties from the Jura Mountains.

“We must have spent thousands of days doing presentations in Russian stores explaining how we make our cheese,” Mr. Arnaud said. “Our cheese is not just protein and fat. It is a culture, a tradition, produced under strict conditions.”

“For instance, we require 10 square meters of pasture per cow,” he continued. “That way, we can be sure that our cows are happy, that they have enough feed, enough diversity. The particular taste of each cheese comes from the flowers on our mountains.”

Over the past 20 years, this kind of sales talk has persuaded Russian consumers to reach for more sophisticated, more expensive varieties. That effort has now come to halt. Getting into the Russian market in the first place is not easy, several exporters said.

“You need energy, patience and persistence,” Mr. Hugon said.

Russian sanitary inspectors — who test for radioactivity, for instance — are meticulous, capricious and at times, outright political (four Moscow branches of McDonald’s, widely seen as a symbol of the West, have been temporarily shut down for violations of the “sanitary code”).

“Nowhere is simple,” Mr. Arnaud said, “but Russia has particular demands.”

Tell that to European pig farmers, whose exports to Russia were halted last February, after wild boars infected with an African swine disease were spotted in Poland and the Baltic states. All 28 countries of the European Union — many of them far away from the infected boars — were affected.

The French hog industry anticipates losses of €400 million this year because of the Russian embargoes, plus €200 million in losses for slaughterhouses and related businesses.

Now, hopes for lifting the pork embargo have collapsed under the new yearlong sanctions, threatening further losses for farmers and slaughterhouses.

“We’re not happy, not happy at all,” said Paul Auffray, president of the national pig farmers’ association and a Brittany pig farmer. “We are hostages of a situation that is out of our control.”

Not all French farmers are suffering. Cheese makers near the southeastern French town of Annecy are less affected because their main product, Reblochon, is too fragile for export to Russia. Wines and spirits were exempted from the sanctions, good news for French vintners, who in 2013 claimed 21.7 percent of the Russian market.

The European Union has pledged €125 million to buy fruit and vegetable surpluses created by the Russian sanctions. But the fear is that a once-promising market will soon fill up with competing produce from countries — like Switzerland — not on the banned list. “A year is a long time,” Mr. Arnaud said.

French farmers are famous for grumbling, but this time, they are bitter.

“Notice that this is not hurting oil or gas, weapons, finance, wine or luxury goods,” Mr. Auffray said. “It’s just us, country people, who are caught up in the middle of this imbroglio.”