Wholesale Markets, or How to Connect Farm to Table (Through Logistics)
For fresh produce, fruits and vegetables, and cut flowers, national-interest markets (MINs) and wholesale markets connect agricultural production sites with our tables through shops and markets. Vital to supplying food products to France’s 67 million people and essential to the economy, this report goes inside these logistics giants to better understand how they operate and why they matter.
“It is 1963. Rungis is still a long way from emerging from the ground. At Les Halles, not yet referred to as ‘former,’ in front of the zinc bar at ‘Deux Pavillons,’ regulars smile knowingly and slap one another hard on the shoulders and thighs whenever the word ‘transfer’ is mentioned. Nobody believes it. Or rather, almost nobody does.” This is what one can read in the opening pages of Jean-Claude Goudeau’s historical novel Le Transfert des Halles à Rungis, published in 1977. Yet the move from Les Halles de Paris to the Rungis International Market was very real. It not only gave rise to one of the era’s largest construction projects, but also foreshadowed a new era in food logistics serving shops and cafeterias in the rapidly growing Île-de-France region. “It was during the 1960s that national-interest markets and the main wholesale markets were created,” says Jean-Jacques Bolzan, President of the Fédération des marchés de gros de France and also Toulouse Métropole’s vice president responsible for healthy eating.
In Agen, Bordeaux, Grenoble, Nice and Strasbourg, MINs were developed throughout France after public authorities created this status in 1953, continuing through 1970 to “consolidate agricultural production, ensure its distribution throughout mainland France and thereby feed all French people,” Jean-Jacques Bolzan explains. More than fifty years later, “we have fifteen MINs and ten wholesale markets in France, located primarily near major cities and agricultural production areas.”
Wholesale markets: “major economic and logistics tools”
Asking Jean-Jacques Bolzan about the importance of MINs and wholesale markets in France* is almost like asking a baker about the importance of flour. “They are essential; they are major economic and logistics tools,” he states emphatically. And rightly so: wholesale markets supply more than 45 million consumers every day and account for 137,000 direct and indirect jobs, 4,700 producers, 2,500 operators and 63,000 buyers. “MINs structure the logistics of agrifood supply chains by enabling wholesalers to source and collect their products, local farmers to sell their output through wholesalers or directly in the ‘producers’ trading area,’ and retailers and restaurateurs to obtain supplies.” At the Toulouse MIN alone—a mixed-economy company in which Toulouse Métropole holds an 85% stake and France’s second-largest MIN after Rungis—more than 3,000 buyers (local shops, restaurants, open-air markets and supermarkets, among others) across nine departments receive fresh products every day.
“MINs must become the tool that links rural and urban areas in order to prevent food-supply crises,” says Jean-Jacques Bolzan, who was tasked by the government, alongside Strasbourg Autonomous Port Chair Anne-Marie Jean and former minister Anne-Marie Idrac, with considering greener urban logistics. “MINs and wholesale markets are supplied primarily by wholesalers. Our work focused mainly on the second logistics phase—in other words, the last link in the chain to metropolitan areas.” For now, most products are transported by truck, while natural gas for vehicles (NGV) and electric vehicles are growing but remain in the minority. “MINs act as trailblazers for logistics innovations by testing new transport solutions for the last miles. By centralizing supplies, they already naturally help reduce transport-related nuisances and congestion in city centers.”
This is also why it is important to keep MINs as close as possible to consumption areas: to reduce the environmental impact of projects while preserving their economic benefits for businesses in the region. Cities such as Bordeaux have thus managed to incorporate the logistics facility into their urban-development plans as part of the Euratlantique project, which aims to completely redevelop the Saint-Jean railway-station district and its surroundings. Other cities, such as Lyon, have chosen to relocate their MINs in order to build offices and housing, pushing logistics activities farther out to the city’s outskirts.
To go further in building food logistics chains, this recently published report calls on local authorities to fully incorporate logistics into their regional strategies by creating positions for “elected logistics representatives, backed by in-house expertise within departments that cuts across all city delegations.” “It is a necessity,” according to Jean-Jacques Bolzan, in order to create networks at the level of local urban-planning plans and develop urban logistics facilities around city fringes, modeled on MINs: heavy trucks arriving from highway corridors, followed by electric vehicles heading into cities. “Logistics happens every day, and it is not just heavy trucks; food does not arrive on the plate by itself,” Jean-Jacques Bolzan insists. For this local elected official, who has made “healthy eating” a priority for the city of Toulouse, local agriculture and short supply chains go hand in hand, making MINs and wholesale markets more indispensable than ever.
*All MINs are members of the Fédération des marchés de gros de France
