France's minister of agriculture, Bruno Le Maire, this week declared, during a presentation of Le Petit Producteur's new range of products, that 'the future of farming is local'.
Le Petit Producteur is a collective initiative of more than 400 producers of fruit and vegetables and, more recently, milk, and has been supported by Mr Le Maire since its creation five years ago.
'I believe in localness and proximity because that is the true expectation of the French consumer,' he said.
The initiative's priorities are localness, traceability and quality, and all its produce is colour-coded to inform the consumer whether it is top of the range, local, organic, grown on a farm that is being converted to organic, or directly sold by the producer to the shop.
