The wind lifts one of her black locks.
Her large green brown eyes narrowed in the harsh mid-afternoon light.
Jeans, white shirt, parka, Audrey Bourolleau looks at the camera.
His rubber boots stuck in the field.
The press attaché intervenes quickly to re-style it.
"Don't you want to touch the earth?"
», Offers him the photographer of the Parisian.
A touch of mischief crosses his still youthful face.
Emmanuel Macron's former agriculture advisor has fun: “I rarely stroke the ears of wheat.
"
Behind her slim figure, the hum of jackhammers drowns out the sounds of birds.
A manor house, a farmhouse, agricultural sheds and some prefabricated buildings cut across the plain.
A sign indicates in black letters on a white background: "Hectar".
Six hundred and ten precisely surround this future agricultural school, located in Lévis-Saint-Nom, a small village nestled in the south of Yvelines, in the heart of the Chevreuse valley.
The start-up nation campaign version
The young quadra is the president of this general interest association, which she co-founded with the French billionaire and boss of Free, Xavier Niel.
They bought this farm in December 2019 for 19 million euros, to which are added 5 million works.
By September, 2000 apprentice farmers should come to train each year on this site, presented as "the largest agricultural campus in the world".
2000 neo-farmers should be trained each year on this 610 hectare site.
LP / Philippe Lavieille
"160,000 farms are to be taken over within three years," announces the initiator of the project. There is a huge issue of generational renewal. »With Hectar - a free school open to all - the one which presents itself" as a woman of action and projects "wants to attract neo-murals. “We must revalue these professions and place them in an entrepreneurial process. Here we are going to train agricultural entrepreneurs. "
A start-up nation side, campaign version. Success can also be in the meadow. La Marcheuse - who left the Elysee Palace but not the presidential party - believes in it. With her husband and their two children aged 4 and 6, she left her Parisian apartment to settle in the countryside, in the village. Photoshoot ended, she unfolds her journey in one of the prefabricated buildings which serves as an office while waiting for the work to be completed. Concentrated and conscientious. As she prepares the coffee, she warns: “This is the first time that I have indulged in this kind of exercise. The former wine lobbyist is more used to giving advice than telling stories.
This time, she's in charge.
“I want to propose an economically viable, socially just and sustainable model for the planet.
»Three principles that she tries to apply in her fields.
Because before being a school, Hectar is a farm, where dairy cows rub shoulders with cereal and legume crops.
All in "regenerative agriculture": a mix between organic and soil conservation agriculture, which consists of no longer plowing.
Audrey Bourolleau repeats it with her rapid challenge: “The step is very high.
"
"I have always had goals for success"
So high that it makes some teeth cringe. "It's always funny to see that someone who explained to us that we had to reduce the size of farms finally has one that is 10 times bigger than mine", laughs Damien Greffin, president of the FRSEA d'Ile. -de-France, before leaving his grudges in the closet to salute the “ambition” of the project. “I was afraid it would be Marie-Antoinette's farm with the little flowers and the little birds, but Audrey Bourolleau finally took a very economical approach. He is a pragmatic person who has his feet on the ground. "
The applicant claims it: “I am an earthling. Doubly granddaughter of farmers, on my mother's and father's side. She knew boots before heels. And his move has all of the famous “back to earth”. “It's funny after all, I moved to a village even smaller than the one I grew up in. "
From this rural childhood, a few kilometers from Niort, she remembers the Wednesdays spent on the farm of her paternal grandparents, cattle breeders.
The idea of a “profession of humility and authenticity”, the “taste for effort” like that of “nature”.
But at the time, the schoolgirl - daughter of a housewife and a department manager in mass distribution - dreamed of big cities and social lift.
Far from his "modest and poorly literate" family background.
“I didn't really know what I wanted to do but I always had goals for success within me.
And a successful life for my generation was to leave where we come from to go to Paris.
"
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For this first of the class, it will be preparatory HEC then business school in La Rochelle. Before setting out to storm the capital, with the marketing departments of large groups in sight. Baron Philippe de Rothschild offered him his first post. Right in the target. "I have always liked local products," insists the one who chaired the wine club at her business school. I had also made my thesis on the wine market in the United States. It is one of the French flagships. "
The rest of her CV is written between France Boissons and the Syndicat des Côtes de Bordeaux, with a small hook by Bic where she deals with the Middle East and Africa.
Until becoming in 2012 the general delegate of Vin et Société, an association that represents "500,000 players in the vine and wine".
In 2014, La Revue du vin de France named her Woman of the Year.
And underlines the "energy" of that which "has masterfully remobilized the actors of French wine, then in the crosshairs of the health authorities".
"A dynamic woman who scrubs and sometimes disturbs"
The policy arrives with the presidential election of 2017. Audrey Bourolleau - “rather apolitical” - has never engaged yet. “With other actors of civil society, we had set up the citizen movement Transition, saying to ourselves:
We don't want Hollande, nor Sarkozy, nor Le Pen, what do we do?
En Marche was a way of going beyond existing divisions and being progressive. »She quickly became the agricultural referent for the countryside and developed the program.
The arrival of this “lobbyist who contributed to the weakening of the Evin law” at the Elysee Palace worries the associations of addictologists.
"When we say lobbyist, it seems almost diabolical but in reality she was representing the interests of a sector which is one of the most important in France", defends Sylvain Fort, former communications advisor to Emmanuel Macron, who met Audrey Bourolleau during the campaign before meeting her at the Elysée.
"But there is nothing sulphurous about it, she did not pass laws to allow minors to smoke!"
"
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He retains "his even mood, even in the face of very strong pressure, his very technical side, his round and diplomatic personality". “Audrey is a woman of vision, of incredible energy, praises Clément Beaune, the current Secretary of State for European Affairs through his cabinet. She is one of those rare enthusiastic people who thinks anything is possible. And who act. "Christiane Lambert, president of the FNSEA, also paints the portrait of" a dynamic and hard-working woman who scrubs and who sometimes disturbs ".
Like when she joined forces with Xavier Niel.
The announcement of its partnership with the telecoms magnate - notably on the initiative of the referendum for the animal cause against intensive breeding - raises fears in the agricultural world.
And questions about "the ideological finality" of Hectar.
Solicited, the businessman replies that he does not prefer to express himself "as long as the project is not formally launched".
"A formal attack on public education"
Audrey Bourolleau assumes. After three years of “total commitment” at the Elysee Palace, she “wanted to carry her convictions differently”. “It was I who knocked on Xavier Niel's door. We already knew each other through our networks. I like the innovative side of Station F
(Editor's note: start-up campus in the 13th arrondissement of Paris)
and of school 42
(schools that train developers)
. The idea is to apply this mindset to agriculture. "
The Confédération paysanne shares the observation, not the method.
Nicolas Girod, the spokesperson for this union, sees this new school as “a formal attack on public agricultural education”.
“The training structures already exist but are sorely lacking in resources.
And we feel that there is no political will to give them any.
The fact that this project is set up by Macron's former agricultural advisor is significant.
"
Audrey Bourolleau ensures "to offer a complementary offer".
Around her temporary office, ears of wheat have replaced the buildings she dreamed of as a child.
As if the tide had turned.
“We feel that with the new generation, there is this idea of succeeding in life, rather than succeeding in life.
"
