For 58 years, the “Ferme France” has held a fair every year in Paris. Almost without interruption, since the Covid-19 forced the organizers to cancel the event last year. For this “reunion edition”, placed under the sign of the presidential election, which will see the president, not yet a candidate, Emmanuel Macron strolling through the aisles on Saturday morning, there will be many topical subjects. Repercussions of the Ukrainian crisis, social and environmental crisis… The leading agricultural producer in the European Union is going through a turbulent period.
L’Express took the pulse of the sector with Christiane Lambert, the president of the powerful agricultural union FNSEA, to analyze with her the effects of global warming on the sector. First cause of CO2 emissions but also first victim of disruption, French agriculture is approaching a new turning point in its history. Maintenance.
L’Express: Why does the Agricultural Show still fascinate politicians so much?
Christiane Lambert: They come to talk, talk, and talk again (laughs). And if it didn’t help, they wouldn’t come. Afterwards, it is true that in terms of organization it is always a little more complicated on the eve of elections, between those who do not want to meet and the demands of each other. But agriculture is a concentrate of the concerns of the French: food, territories, identity, traditions…
We expect 700,000 visitors this year, that’s more than for the Motor Show! It is also the reunion edition after two years of pandemic. The French love agriculture, 80% say they want to eat French and politicians have understood that they can speak to them by addressing farmers.
We often oppose agriculture and the environment. Why ?
The Salon is also the opportunity for us to say what is wrong, and, you are right, this debate is meaningless. For twenty years we have been saying that there is no plan B for the planet. Now, why does France complicate the lives of farmers on the environment when we import products from elsewhere that do not respect the same rules as us?
I published a report in 2019 which was titled “Making Climate Change a Chance”. And look at what France has done in recent years: we are the only country to have reduced phytosanitary measures. It is a caricature to say that we are not green. The environment, we deal with it every day on our farms.
Do you not still carry around this image of a union of large farms, which your predecessor Xavier Beulin (former president of the Avril group, who died suddenly in 2017) could embody?
The opposition between “big” versus “small” farmers is a problem. It is a very “Parisian” vision of agriculture. With us, the average size of a farm is 69 hectares. In Germany it’s 100 hectares, in the United Kingdom it’s 120 hectares and I’m not talking about the United States… Our agriculture is very focused on family farms, that gives us a capacity for resilience. You see, I have a pig farm, some years we pay two Smic with my husband, and when things are bad, it’s a salary for two. It’s very random. When you have a large farm, the payroll is constant so these structures are also more exposed.
According to the Ministry of the Environment, 19% of CO2 emissions came from agriculture in 2019. How to green the sector?
It’s true that we emit 19% over the entire chain, from the field to the plate. But we have also reduced our CO2 emissions by 8% in fifteen years. How? ‘Or’ What ? Mainly by optimizing herd management, having more productive cows, using less fertilizer, because they emit nitrous oxide (N2O). We have also covered our farms for the winter, limited bare soil and increased carbon capture.
In the fields, we try to sow two plants at the same time, one that grows quickly and the other more slowly to optimize space and fight against weeds. We make sure not to lose land. We have also increased yields by 10 to 15% in recent years, while limiting our use of water with more sophisticated installations. We’ve done some stuff! And with the new digital tools, plus the recovery plan [NDLR : un milliard d’euros pour l’agriculture] that we went to get because we weren’t concerned at the start, we are going to improve the situation even further.
Recently, a breeder told us that with the drought, he had to send more animals to the slaughterhouse because he couldn’t feed them. The paradox is therefore that farmers are both actors and first victims of global warming…
I would even say that we are victims, cause and solution. We can clearly see that the harvest date is advancing by an average of three weeks. Same for pickups. Frost episodes are also more random and more violent. That’s why we want to be an actor. We have just set up two structures, one will market carbon credits, the other will offset biodiversity.
Can you tell us about these projects?
We started from an association, France Carbon Agriculture, created in 2018 by cattle and goat breeders from the FNSEA. The idea was to show how we could use grasslands, which capture 75% of methane, to offer compensation to companies. We have commissioned institutes to count all of our emissions, including those from transport trucks. We have made the carbon balance sheets of 13,000 farms [NDLR : la France compte 389 000 exploitations agricoles] and have already managed to capture 900,000 tonnes of carbon.
Which companies are interested?
We are in contact with 32 companies, mainly large groups such as Guerlain, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s or Ferrero…
Aren’t you afraid to be an instrument of greenwashing ?
We are very demanding on the energy diagnosis. These companies will continue to emit greenhouse gases and we are here to provide solutions. For example, we have replanted kilometers of hedges through these biodiversity compensation actions. These are concrete projects where company employees can even come and pitch in to plant the trees. That’s how you change things.
Confinements and travel restrictions have propelled short circuits. At the same time, large organic farms, particularly dairy ones, are struggling to sell their production. Has organic reached its glass ceiling?
It is true that for organic, the situation is delicate. Confinements have made consumers rediscover short circuits. And it’s a good thing. In my board of directors, I have 9% organic farmers. The concern is that no one knows whether the problem is cyclical or structural. There is clearly a slack in organic farming, which is complicated because converting a farm takes a long time.
Prices have risen so much, sometimes three times the margin, that milk processing companies have asked for a slowdown in conversions because they can no longer sell the products. The market dictates the rules and no one knows what will happen in six months.