The last Breton class ended with a discussion on food shopping. We had been talking about supermarkets, and someone said he never shopped in a supermarket, then another one said his wife only goes to the supermarket for those things you don’t find on the market such as toilet paper or detergent.
If you listen to French people, you’d think that the majority of  French people do their shopping at the local butcher’s or on the local farmers’ market. There are still lot of independent butchers, bakers… in France, but the reality is somewhat different. According to Francoscopie, only 3.4% of the working population is working in agriculture; That’s about 875000 people (in 2007). In 1946, they were 7.5 millions.
In the French mind, French farmers still live on a small farm, following ancestral practices. The reality is somewhat different.
Only 21% of French farms have a surface of 20 hectares or less, this represents only 2% of the cultivated land. French farming is one of the most efficient and industrialised in the world, not far behind the USA in terms of productivity.
So, where do French people do their shopping? The answer is simple: like anyone in the western world, they go the the local supermarkets. But on special occasions, they will go the the local butcher or baker, or attend the farmers market.