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Of the 320 pages of report submitted to Parliament on 19 June, the Observatory of Pricing and Food Margins devoted 319 pages to the analysis of the situation in 2016 and 2017. A single page is risk to the prospective but it is worthy of interest. Because, at the request of the steering committee of the Observatory, it simulates the effect of a 10% increase in domestic agricultural prices on household food expenditure.

At a time when the law for the balance of commercial relations in the agricultural and food sector plans to give farmers the power to set their selling prices, this projection brings objective information to the debate. Even if the Observatory wishes to emphasize that this figure of 10% was chosen arbitrarily. Thus, if domestic farm prices increased by 10%, this would mechanically result in a 4.4% increase in the purchase expenditure on domestic food products. Prices for agri-food and beverage products would be up 3.6%. "What result in 2.7% increase in total food expenditure (including food and imported foods), and + 0.5% on total household spending, knowing that food accounts for 20% of household spending" , says the Observatory. This projection does not take into account the effect of the price increase on the volume of demand, but only the mechanical transmissions of this rise along the chain. "To achieve this, we simulate the rise in product prices of each industry that keeps its value added at the initial level. And we consider, moreover, that the rates of taxes and margins of trade and transport remain constant ", comment the editors. Another possible simulation: if the levels of taxes and margins remained constant, and no longer the rates, then the effect on prices would be further amortized: it would be close to + 2%, compared to + 2.7% in the previous scenario with a + 0.4% increase in total household spending.

Even as the raising of the resale threshold at a loss of 10% is already fearing a rise in prices and cry wolf consumer associations and the sign E. Leclerc, ball in the lead, such inflation would necessarily debate. Especially since it would be mechanically accompanied by an increase of at least 3% in the tariffs of agri-food manufacturers, without any other effect, moreover.

This scenario imagined by the Observatory is obviously totally hypothetical, but it at least has the merit of projecting all actors and observers of the food market in a scenario of improving the living conditions of upstream French producers and farmers.