Les paysans nient voler le pain des métiers de bouche (Farmers aren’t stealing bread from chefs) said the headline in 24Heures, one of Lausanne’s daily newspapers. Lausanne is not San Francisco, where certain restaurants have come to fame in supporting small farms. Lausanne is surrounded by farms of all sizes, but nothing like the Central Valley, or Watsonville, where factory fields churn out strawberries like so many Legos. Restaurants here serve much local produce, but the famous Lac Leman trout is too expensive for most, and so its imported, sometimes frozen.
Intrigued, I gave the article a careful read, meaning that I had my dictionary and the person sitting next to me in the café helping to translate.
It seems that an organization of the owners of cafés, restaurants and hotels, called GastroVaud, and other of butchers, bakers and confectioners, feel that direct sales from farms compete unfairly with their own highly regulated businesses.
For their part, the farmer’s organizations point out that their direct sales are miniscule compared to the volume of the supermarkets, CoOp and Migros. They think that the businesses of butchers, for example, do not do well because in trying to compete on price, they offer no service. Nor will Butchers pay the price for meat that the farmer can obtain by selling direct to customers at the farm.
Much government in Switzerland operates at the Cantonal level, the equivalent of the State level in the U.S. The Canton of Vaud brought the groups together, as they share the values of authenticité and proximité, (Yes, exactly what they sound like in English.) and should be playing for the same team.
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