Anne-Cécile Suzanne is a farmer in mixed farming and a strategy consultant for food players at Kéa&Partners.
Prohibition of neonicotinoids, disappearance of French cows, acceleration of global warming, tractors in Paris… While the doors of the agricultural show are about to open, the time is strategic… and tense, for the fields of France.
The choices, postponed for years, are being made, not without consequences.
The first of these choices is the specialization of our agriculture.
The decision is taken through the national version of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), our famous national strategic plan.
It decrees the development of field crops through support for the cultivation of vegetable proteins.
The sector is already one of the most profitable in French agriculture;
increasing support for it naturally means pushing farmers to specialize in it more.
Grazing cattle farming finances this support for the increased development of field crops.
Conversely, it is one of the least profitable sectors of French agriculture.
By making him finance this development, we deal him the coup de grace.
The effect is immediate:
our imports of red meat jumped 23% in 2022, the number of cows in France has fallen by half a million since 2021. And it's not over: the French landscape is feeling the pinch .
Grasslands are increasingly plowed to make way for field crops.
The carbon that has been stored there for hundreds of years is released.
So you have to compensate.
We desperately develop soil conservation agriculture, we advocate the reduction of the use of imported fertilizers.
But it's running against the wind, because the best fertilizer remains manure and it too disappears with the cows that produced it.
Specialization is thus good for agricultural bottom lines, but from an environmental and agronomic point of view, it
In Europe, the choice is made to favor precaution.
Genetically modified seeds are prohibited there, as are dubious phytosanitary products.
Anne-Cecile Suzanne
The second choice made is that of the precautionary principle rather than that of production.
Some States, particularly the United States, advocate the reduction in the use of phytosanitary products, the reduction of tillage to preserve its fertility, as well as adaptation to climate change, while maintaining yields, through the use of genetically modified seeds.
By introducing disease resistance and sterility of the plant preventing its subsequent reproduction in the natural environment, these States are betting on increased production competitiveness and more sustainability.
In Europe, the choice is made to favor precaution.
Genetically modified seeds are prohibited there, as are dubious phytosanitary products.
In the face of climate change,
we work on genetics naturally, so slowly.
Of course, European agriculture can then no longer compete with its competitors.
Price differences are increasing and consumers are eating more and more products from imported GMOs.
This second choice is therefore prudent, but also naive.
The last choice concerns our budget.
The cost of our food is soaring since we specialize in agricultural production on large crops and we favor precaution over production.
Of course, other variables come into play, but here we are nevertheless at the heart of the problem.
Because our fruits, our vegetables, our French steaks are becoming rare, very rare, they are becoming expensive.
And importing our food in times of global food and energy tensions means paying a high price.
In the end, you have to pay well.
The farmer did it, the agri-food industry did it, the supermarkets probably did it too.
But today, it is up to the consumer to pay.
Paying for the choices made for our agriculture and our food.
The line for our agriculture is therefore fixed, there is no doubt now.
But the question still deserves to be asked: is that what we really want?
Because we could dream otherwise.
We could support the maintenance of our territorial agriculture, anchored in a geography and a geology which means that some land is made for pasture and others for cultivation.
We could entrust the regions with the mission of maintaining a diversified agriculture, which takes as many forms as there are established farmers, but which converge on one point: adaptation to its territory, respect for the human being who, behind each grain which germinates, each calf which is born, is at work to undertake life, with a passion for its profession.
This beauty deserves that we commit ourselves to it, by defending agricultural diversity, because we are not talking here about the interest of a profession, but about maintaining the French DNA.
Anne-Cecile Suzanne
So of course, this would already suppose that livestock farming pays as much as cereals, that winegrowers stop seeing their harvest destroyed one year out of two, or even that the citizen, the activist, the consumers, understand that national agriculture is incredibly beautiful, even exceptional, when so many countries have for years pushed farmers to specialize.
This beauty deserves that we commit ourselves to it, by defending agricultural diversity, because we are not talking here about the interest of a profession, but about maintaining the French DNA.
France is still beautiful, thanks to the diversity of landscapes that farmers have shaped.
It involves all of that, and more.
Genetic research, courage, greater openness of the farming profession to women and to installations outside the family framework, because there is no more endogamous profession than that of French farmer.
We should defend the French agricultural exception at European level, stop preferring fine speeches, moral promises that give pleasure on Sunday mornings, to less grandiose, but concrete achievements, which advance towards the objective set.
Once again, it is this objective that must drive us.
Before succumbing to promises, we must ask ourselves what we really want.
Understand also that behind it, it must be financed, assumed, and that there is a great responsibility there.
Once the cows have been sold, the meadows turned over, the vines uprooted, the beets abandoned, turning back does not come like that.
Nature takes a long time to regain its footing, the effects on biodiversity or the climate difficult to reverse once the damage has been done.
When generations of farmers are discouraged, regaining faith in the craft does not come like this.
Let us therefore assume our responsibility, not only in the choices made, but also in the consequences that must be anticipated, because our bad choices today,