The 804 schools specializing in agricultural education are attracting more and more people. After a decline in the number of students over the past decade, we are finally returning to a number that is approaching the peak years of the late 1990s. And this year, we expect even more students.
Nearly 230,000 students started their 2022 academic year in agricultural education establishments. A workforce that continues to grow at an increasingly sustained pace. At the Briacé high school, in Ancenis, near Nantes, among the sectors, a class focuses on breeding. This is the first time that this class is full, with 25 students, but especially with a majority of girls, relates Matthew Bonhoureour correspondent in Nantes.
In the middle of the 3 hectares of land, the 25 students discover the faces of their friends, and especially their girlfriends. They are 13 girls for only 12 boys. ” We start by calling for our two classes: Maeva, Angèle, Alice, Lena… And among all these young girls, there is Flavie. She has already completed a five-month internship. in a farm of dairy cows, the life of a peasant what! I like milking, cleaning tractors, all that. »
At only 16, she has a dream: to have her own cattle operation one day, “ because I love animals, and then we are in contact with nature a lot, I like all that. »
In the classroom, this majority of girls surprises even Jean-Pierre Cann. The head teacher for this Livestock and Field Crops course has never seen this. ” We really feel a revival in agriculture. Before, we only had classes for boys, he said. Me, I think it’s one of the first times that we have more girls than boys, it’s a beautiful thing. »
new profiles
He, who has seen dozens of generations pass by, notes that this is also the first time that the class is filling up for the start of the school year: “ It’s very pleasing. We teach in an agricultural high school, it’s a bit like the royal sector, so we’re very happy to have such large classes. »
They are also new profiles, far removed from the agricultural environment. In 1990, 35% of students came from a farming family, compared to just 10% now. Moreover, according to INSEE figures, polyculture-livestock farmers, cattle breeders, cereal growers, wine growers, market gardeners, fishing owners, agricultural work contractors, etc. : in France, in nearly forty years, while the size of farms has increased, the share of farmer-operators in employment has fallen sharply, from 7.1% in 1982 to 1.5% in 2019. French agriculture has lost 80% of its farms and more than five million agricultural jobs in half a century.
At the end of 2021, according to the ten-year census carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture, three-quarters of working farmers were men and 58% were aged 50 or over. The proportion of female farm managers was 27%.
A growing share dedicated to agroecology
Faced with climate change and its environmental and food sovereignty consequences facing agriculture, agricultural education initiated, in 2020, the national transformation plan : “Teaching to produce differently for transitions and agroecology”. The aim is to develop the training offered by each establishment, in line with the local agricultural context.