In Amiens (Somme), Lucien Fontaine offers his vegetables, organic and seasonal, for only 3 or 4 euros. The former socialist mayor assistant is not a gardener on the market, but the president of the Solida collaboration association, which distributes these baskets at a price three times cheaper than the equivalent in a large distribution.
To handle these prices, the former chosen officer works with market gardeners who agree to reduce their margin and trust local businesses, which agree to invest in these solidarity markets in exchange for a tax reduction. An initiative that Lucien Fontaine imagines as the premises of a “generalized social insurance” widespread everywhere in France.
“Imagine that we have a collaboration between public authorities and farmers who play the game of selling a quality product at the right price,” Dreams Lucien Fontaine. “That users have the opportunity to spend a certain amount per month among these same producers.”
“Maybe we will not need to spend billions to stop the consequences of junk food in our health system,” he hopes.
This system could, according to him, also “satisfy the gardeners of the market” that have been going through a crisis for several years and “without which the population feeds badly, preferring ultra products saturated with fat, salt or sugar.” The latter today represents seven out of ten products in the supermarket offer, according to a study by the NGO Foodwatch dated 2023.
150 euros per month and adult
What Lucien Fontaine has implemented Amiens, some would like to generalize it, in a different way, at the national level. A bill to experiment with a new “vital card” of food this Thursday, February 20, as part of the “niche” of the environmental deputies in the National Assembly.
The idea of the text would be to assign a sum of 150 euros per month and by adult to eat to guarantee “social security for all”. “With the possibility, in the long term, to see a few additional dozens per child per child, specifies Boris Tavernier, deputy of Eelv of the second district of the Rhône.
A basic sum temporarily fixed, “quite logical in the perspective of a project directed, for the moment, Experimentation, “estimates the parliamentarian, also founder of the Bulk Association, which wishes to promote the development of purchase groups in priority neighborhoods.
“Even if we call ourselves Bernard Arnault, we can benefit from him,” summarizes the elected official. “This is a principle of universal equality: 150 euros per month, whatever happens.”
This credit could spend on food purchases “in democratically agreed places,” said the deputy on Tuesday at a press conference in Paris.
“The meaning of history”
80 years after the creation of Social Security in France, environmental deputies believe that the establishment of a food card “follows the meaning of history.” “His vocation is to protect us” against junk food, explained the relative of the text, Charles Fournier, Tuesday in BFMTV.
“We know that some will refrain and take doubts about financing, in particular,” said Boris Tavernier. “This is always a point where the hemicycle is destroying. I want to tell the other deputies that they must be heard and understand that the social security of food is viable.”
According to AFP, the measure is financed by public funds up to 50%, by local authorities with 25%and through a voluntary citizen contribution for the remaining 25%. “Depending on the needs and according to their media,” said Charles Fournier in BFMTV.
For Lucien Fontaine, this initiative shows that the subject “becomes serious.” “In Amiens, we saw that this was possible as it remained correct and studied the different system variables,” he said. “With a large -scale experiment, which the text would inevitably allow ourselves to realize what to adjust.”
Source: BFM TV
