New baguette price sparks ire of some in France

The new price of baguettes at a leading French supermarket is sparking outrage from some.

As of last week, customers in Leclerc stores were greeted with the new baguette price -- 29 cents (in Euros).

The president of the Leclerc supermarket chain, Michel-Édouard Leclerc, announced Jan. 11 that baguettes would remain at that price in Leclerc stores across France for a minimum of four months.

"Yes, blocking the price of the baguette at 29 cents is quite a symbol!" Leclerc tweeted Wednesday, officially launching the initiative, adding that: "The baguette is a benchmark for the evolution of prices and purchasing power for consumers."

That is 10 cents cheaper than Leclerc competitors Intermarché and Super U, and 16 cents less than at Carrefour stores. Meanwhile, the average baguette price in France is 90 cents.

This new price stirred the ire of five key players in the industry that branded the measure as "shameful" and "destructive" in a joint press release signed by the national farmers' union FNSEA, the National Association of French Milling (ANMF), the National Confederation of French Bakery and Pastry shops (CNBPF), the organization representative of the French cereals sector Intercéréales and the General Association of Wheat Producers (AGPB) on Wednesday.

"In France, there are 450,000 people doing all this work in the cereal sector. It's not just bread, but the whole cereal industry. I think it's denigrating the whole industry!" the president of Intercéréales Jean-François Loiseau said to ABC News, arguing that "every day, a French person eats 30 cents worth of bread on average. When Leclerc sells his baguette for 29 cents, if I follow the same proportion, it means that he offers the French to eat bread for 10 cents every day. That's a 20-cent difference every day. Is the subject of purchasing power in France at 20 cents a day, on bread?"

In the joint statement, the five organizations emphasized the difficult circumstances they said they are facing. For many years now, they said they have been fighting to be paid more fairly, while the price of wheat has exploded worldwide in recent months, and production costs are also increasing "strongly."

Some customers had mixed reactions to the pricing announcement.

To Youssef Aïtbaila, 39, who just bought a baguette at the boulangerie Les Pyramides in Colombes, a northwestern suburb of Paris, Leclerc "is right" because "everything has become very expensive."

"It's always good to be able to give everyone access to a cheap baguette because it's true that bread has increased a lot," said Emilie Péré, 38, a client and mother of one.

At the Leclerc store across the street, 30-year-old Justine Grangette wasn't too thrilled about the decision, insisting that it's part of Michel-Edouard Leclerc's "mentality" of cutting prices. "Anyway, I will continue to buy from my local baker."

After an increase in 2021, the purchasing power per household in France is expected to fall by 0.5% in the first half of the year according to an assessement by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee).