"Don't we need another hero" by Bertrand Guély, our retail specialist.

Don't we need another hero?

What if ecological speaking suffered from a lack, detrimental to the cause, of a minimum charismatic speaker?
No need to be out of Harvard or to appeal to Professor Langdon and his science of symbology to realize that ecology today suffers more from a lack of 'faces' than impacting images, unfortunately often front page in the newspapers.
Question of generation? The not so young like me had the safeguard of the oceans and, as a symbol, Cousteau's red cap, the massacre of baby seals and, as a symbol, Bardot's 105 C cap, Amazon deforestation and, as a symbol, Chief Raoni who, although already having a big mouth, was inducted for the occasion 4th musician of the Police trio, but who do we have today as a symbol capable of, if not to unite, at least to raise awareness around of a cause?

Clarification: I am not talking here of the many specialists, the vast majority of whom are eminent in their fields of predilection. No, I am thinking of speakers. We probably lost the last sincere with Nicolas Hulot (I already had the opportunity on my blog to say in the entry ´Lobby la mouche 'what I thought of the late Mr. Hulot, who left on vacation too early).

https://blogs.vegetable.fr/?paged=3

First of all, a few examples of the current desert: between Greta, who calls for a global strike with the pout of the girl who again had her mobile confiscated after having posted yet another tik tok in panties, the life members of the club -happily dissolved today- mustaches (musketeer style for José the peasant pov, fake kind for Christmas the bile-spitter, intélo-fundamentalist way for Pierre), complete has-beens (Brigitte, you were the most beautiful but you have to go now, you have to go back, and you have very bad company), the bolosses at Dufflot who had a semi-hard after having by chance made a 2-figure score in an obscure election to immediately fall back into the smoke of Beuh, there is hardly any more than the Bendit pulling greedily on his Cohn since 68 by leafing through the children's pages of the catalog of the Redoute and Jean-Vincent Placed in custody to make us laugh from time to time.

The hero is lacking in the cause, therefore, but not only.

Then comes the problem of speaking, each with its fads, quirks, fixations and the whole sorely lacking in a global and balanced proposal. There is something illogical about the existence of an ecological party / movement as any individual with a brain wants to stop the massacre and leave their children a world not too devastated in which you can breathe without a mask (you remember? that was good eh?). Apart from the fans of the Marseillais in Dubai and the potential voters of Montebourg, it's still a lot of people waiting for their new hero.
How should he address us?
What are the rules of communication that could make sense for the universe in which I operate, general retailers, Traditional Fresh Products and Fruits and Vegetables in particular? I propose here 6 beginnings of answer.

1- Symbols yes, clichés no.
Do not take the trivial shortcuts which participate in the mixing of concepts and feed the filthy ignorance of the consumer. If Bio means a priori to say healthier because cultivated without pesticides / synthetic chemical fertilizers / GMOs or other big nasty substances made responsible for all the ills of the planet, it does not in any way promise, on the other hand, to be taste better. All the princesses know it, when they meet a paparazi on their way back from an after party at 5:00 in the morning, good for the health does not mean good for the palate. When we know that the consumer buys with the eyes and will buy with the mouth, not easy to make the 2 concepts coexist but nevertheless necessary.

2- Quality yes but at what price?
Do not naively believe that it is enough to pay the price for quality. Fresh produce in general and fruit and vegetables in particular are supply and demand markets. If you have caught little of a species of fish, it is worth a lot. If we are at the start of the apricot season, we will pay dearly for Spanish fruits with a very average taste, no, no offense to the Pertus ransomers, because they are Spanish but because Mauricio, Galta Roja and Bulida do not offer more. orgasm than a Ukrainian woman from La Jonquera. On the other hand, if the Bergeron is there in August, we will pay very little for a super fruit, again not because it is French, but just because it is a tasty variety of apricot that meets the expectations of fans. of this superb summer fruit.
And to complicate things a bit, the first prices are often as qualitative, or even more than the core range. Indeed, they openly free themselves from the dogmas which have rigidified the supply of power stations since the dawn of time. Apples of size 75/80 only for bulk, mangoes with a red face of 40% minimum, no bulk tomato in 47 and other falsely elitist heresies that are not imposed by the 1st prize pool, which can also source elsewhere than 'in France without risking the traditional summer baggage of shops by producers who are always exasperated but never punished. Notice that they are already all year round when an overwhelming level of charges and a Stalinist bureaucracy simply prevent them from being competitive ...
3- Don't fall for simplicity either.
Do not reduce ecology to a few symbols on which we cast shame in the manner of the anti-smoking coach of the Unknowns. Nutella? And the orangutans answer from the end of the forest that they have 'not well!' Surimi? And the Whiting, not fried yet, staring at us with a disapproving eye, shouting looting of the high seas. Tuna? Even if the Japanese Sushi Masters pay more for the finest specimens than a Parisian 10 to miss their penalties, they are still red with anger and wish the recalcitrant consumer to stumble upon a Fugu. Too simple to let the Don Quixotes of ecology fight against or for, we do not know very well, wind turbines. Note in passing that a big thing that is expensive and inefficient, was likely to please politicians. I would not be surprised if the madwoman of the hidalgo who martyrs Paris, is interested in it once she has finished filling parking lots with unusable electric cars due to the cost of the battery, ubiquitous street furniture and limiting the speed at 5 km / h on the highway. Unless she embarks on a tidal power plant on the Seine, heating with pigeons' droppings of what remains of Notre-Dame or urban rodeo courses for our dear little heads ... uh no, not blonde yet!

4- Explain and keep it simple.
Make understandable and therefore accessible the hazy concepts that onanist gurus feast on but which leave the masses in ignorance. Bilan Carbone, Carbon Tax, phasing and dosage of pesticides, disturbing images of L214 unfairly leading to the slaughterhouse a meat sector already in pain, these are the fascinating replacements of Brigitte's baby seal beaten by unscrupulous norve-dogs or the Breton seagull oiled by a Panamanian tanker. The language around ecology is a mix of specialists who put to sleep and activists who provoke. The weight of the evils, the shock of the Amoco. And so, a minority is still trying to understand what is happening, a majority is content to howl with the pack but without really knowing why.
In recent news, have fun trying to understand the saga, still unfinished, of West Indian banana producers who chlordeconized at full speed for decades and rotten rivers and groundwater when the state preferred to turn a blind eye given hundreds of thousands of jobs at stake ...

5- Take out your wallet.
We should not be afraid to explain the additional costs, when there are necessarily some, of producing in a reasoned or organic way. Today, we suffer from these Fair Trade references which de facto point the finger at traditional references and make the standard consumer a warden of the island of Gorée or a workshop foreman of the Sentier.
There is much to think that the productivist drifts of agriculture are the corollary of professionals condemned to produce always more at always less expensive rather than a malignant desire to destroy the planet.
Just understand that quality in all its forms has a price and that the most effective environmental activist act is certainly to agree to pay the price!

6- I am French, sir!
Stop nationalist masturbation on products for which the simple fact of wearing a cockade would confer, like Super-Dupond, the virtues of a super product.
National products are not more expensive because they are better, but because they are crushed by charges and taxes of all kinds and because the cost of labor in France has taken us out of the game of European and international competition for a long time. We all want our farmers to live better, but it's not up to the consumer to pay. it is the pimping state that leads us - all parties combined - without ever closing its budget other than through a deficit that will have to be financed by more and more taxes.
Of course, these beginnings of tracks will not solve everything but one thing is certain: we are really waiting for the advent of speakers capable of making ecology less gadget for ailments and more minimum vital for everything to be considered. Who will be able to motivate us again? If Branson or Musk have time to make little ones between 2 rockets, let them put one aside for us because we want to follow them and listen to them ...