According to Olivier Brailly of the French company Groupe MGD, a lot of Belgian producers are buying land in France to produce French carrots. "It really surprised me. They bring their know-how, and come to settle in France to grow and sell their carrots.”
After the tomato, the carrot is the second most consumed vegetable in France. "The reason for the arrival of Belgians may be French chauvinism. Most of the French still think French regulations differ from the regulations of the rest of Europe and therefore, they mostly buy French products. Belgian producers come here to sell their products on the French market.”
"Right now, the carrot market is in transition. We’re at the end of the season for traditional French carrots, as well as for Belgian carrots, and the season for Portuguese carrots is coming up. In short: at this moment there’s a little bit of everything, and we lose the French and Belgian chauvinist clients. They are waiting for the new harvest."
It's hard to tell when the new harvest will arrive. "It's a very unusual year: we started products we normally wouldn’t have started yet, and we’ve finished products we normally wouldn’t have finished yet. Everything is a little off. Normally the new harvest should arrive within 14 days at the latest."
"The carrots are mostly for the “local” market, but there are no producers who do not export, especially to Senegal and Ivory Coast. I have a friend who is a producer. He happens to be a Belgian. He sends plenty of containers to Senegal and Ivory Coast, and he’s far from the only one."
Yellow and purple carrots are gaining popularity in France. "This is thanks to TV shows, such as Topchef. Such shows have popularised many old vegetables and niche products, such as purple and yellow carrots. They hold a larger position in the French supermarket than before, but we can’t compare their sales to sales of conventional products. A store selling 10 kilos a day already is a nice trend, as it used to be more like 10 kilos a week."
Olivier emphasises that the influence of such television shows is not unique to France: "In Asia, for example, there was a cooking show about the benefits of spirulina; it was in China or Japan, I think. Since then it has become increasingly complicated to find fresh spirulina in Europe, due to it being completely absorbed by the Asian market and its consumers, only because a TV show brought it up."
For more information: 
Groupe MGD
Olivier Brailly
+336 73 45 48 58