After protests on the streets of Paris, in which farmers sold plums and other fresh produce direct to passers-by, a French bank has announced the launch of a website which offers farmers the chance to sell direct to customers online. image expired

The protests earlier in the year were mounted after farmers, struggling with rising input costs and facing competition from cheaper produce from elsewhere in the EU, where producers were drastically lowering their prices to recoup losses caused by June's E.Coli scare, felt they were being undercut and had to take action to save their industry.

The site, www.directetbon.com links up producers with customers, who can search for either a product they want or different producers within their region. The site also produces newsletters with seasonal recipes and ‘products of the month.’

Directetbon is aimed at consumers searching for "regional delicacies or locally sourced food," which are both highly valued in France. Fabien Henry, head of agriculture at Banque Populaire de l’Ouest, the bank behind the site, said, “A lot of farmers want to sell their own production and we think that a lot of people want to buy local and direct from their area.”

The site, which has been running for two months, already hosts over 200 farmers, aiming to sell their produce. This change of strategy, shifting to sell directly to the consumer, may prove helpful to many French producers, as the latest figures show farming in France is in decline. French farmers blame shrinking margins for the large numbers leaving the industry.

This morning (14th September) Le Monde reported that the number of farms in France had fallen by 26 per cent in the last ten years; in 2010 there were 490 000 farms in France, compared to 663 000 in 2000. The level of employment in agriculture has fallen by a similar amount, having dropped to the equivalent of 750,000 full time posts.

Le Monde revealed that, in France, the pace has slowed, falling by 3 per cent year on year between 2000 and 2010, instead of 3.5 per cent in the nineties. It also revealed that the trend is pan-European; in Italy, the number of farms fell by 24 per cent and in Germany by 36 per cent in the past decade.

The drop off has been caused by more and more mixed polyculture farms being replaced by large scale units, although larger farms have also been susceptible; the only sector to report growth in the past decade, according to the newspaper, was the oilseed sector, principally oilseed rape and sunflower seed in France.