Sustainable Agriculture and Food: Four volume set (Earthscan Reference Collections)

18

French Quality and Ecolabelling

Schemes: Do They Also Benefit the

Environment?

Genevieve Nguyen, Thomas L. Dobbs, Sherry K. Bertramsen

and Bruno Legagneux

Introduction

Facing a major agricultural crisis, European countries are searching for alternatives to
the intensive-production agricultural development model promoted since the early
1950s. Agenda 2000 introduced significant changes in the Common Agricultural
Policy (CAP) by recognizing the multifunctionality of agriculture and by giving
more importance to the ‘second pillar’, a term used to qualify all the measures to
support rural development (Delorme, 2004; Ledent and Burny, 2002). Meanwhile,
agrienvironmental schemes are taking on much greater importance in the overall
policy mix for agriculture in European Union (EU) countries. Various schemes have
been tried over the last 15 years, and new ones are being introduced in such countries
as the UK (Dobbs and Pretty, 2004) and France (Miclet, 1998). The adoption of
environmental schemes by French farmers has been somewhat successful, but farm-
ers often have high opportunity costs and their decisions are driven primarily by
economic considerations (Gafsi et al, 2002; Miclet, 1998). Policy makers now face
substantial challenges to increase the adoption of environmental practices.
In France, there is a fairly long history of food ‘quality’ schemes. ‘Quality’ is used
in the French context to denote taste, healthfulness and conditions of production.
Two of the best-known French quality schemes are the Appellation d’Origine Con-
trôlée (AOC, controlled origin label) and the Label Rouge (LR, or Red Label)
schemes, created respectively in 1919 and 1965 (Agreste, 2003). ‘Eco-labelling’ is a
more recent phenomenon in both Europe and North America. Eco-labels are meant
to provide consumers with information about a product’s environmental impact.
Often these labels contain information about the production process of the product,

Reprinted from Nguyen G, Dobbs T L, Bertramsen S K and Legagneux B. 2004. French quality and
eco-labelling schemes: Do they also benefit the environment. Int. J. Agric. Sust. 2(3), 167–179.