Many farmers are unable to sell their products. Others are looking for employees to plant, sow, pick or even drive farm machinery, as the seasonal workforce they had planned for is no longer available due to the restrictions. With the confinement, the frequentation of markets has decreased drastically. While some cities can maintain these sales outlets under strict safety distance conditions, most have closed. Direct sales are booming and producers are organizing themselves differently to meet the demand.

Several platforms have been created to connect producers and consumers, producers-employers and people available to help.

This platformplatform, launched by the Ministry of Agriculture and the FNSEA, brings together employees who are no longer active due to the confinement and farmers who are looking for labour for the fruit and vegetable harvest and for spring sowing. The employee can thus cumulate his unemployment benefits and his agricultural salary. According to the president of the FNSEA, Christiane Lambert, indicated, on April 10, 240 000 people had registered on the platform.

This new platform also proposes to put in contact, everywhere in France, farmers in search of work or wishing to sell their products, with citizens wishing to give a hand, or to make their purchases near the producers.

Three culinary journalists created a collaborative map of short circuits on March 28: the Green Market. This map lists all the initiatives that allow consumers to eat locally during the period of confinement: peasant grocery stores, collection points, farm sales, AMAPs currently open, markets that have obtained an exemption, etc. This collaborative map makes it possible to identify existing or planned circuits: it also makes it possible to create new ones. "If you have the number of your market gardener, if you know a farm in the countryside or a restaurant owner near you, you can invite them to become a relay point. The idea is that this collaborative map does not stop at filling out a form, but rather encourages people to create new relay points themselves," explains the co-founder. Nearly 1,000 initiatives have been listed on the Green Market map to date.

The Occitanie Region has opened an referencing platform in the form of an interactive map of producers and small traders able to deliver food products directly to individuals. 3,300 producers and merchants in Occitania were registered on the platform on April 8. All of them have committed to deliver orders to homes in compliance with the sanitary rules in force.

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