At a time when the French cattle population is decreasing year after year and more and more farmers are giving up, this is an unexpected setback on the part of the Court of Auditors. In its latest report published on Monday on public support for cattle farmers between 2015 and 2022, the institution makes two shocking recommendations, which should undoubtedly provoke the anger of professionals.
The Sages of the rue Cambon, who judge that the production model of cattle breeding remains "fragile" despite a "very high" public support, and put forward "unfavorable climate balance", do not go by four paths. They call for "defining and making public a strategy for reducing the cattle herd", even though the public authorities and sectors have been fighting for years to maintain this breeding and against the ongoing decapitalization of the herd. A trend still observed between 2020 and 2021 (-2.1% dairy cows and -1.4% suckler cows), and which has accelerated further in recent months.
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Compliance with the France's commitments to reduce methane emissions (subscribed in the international agreement Global Methane Pledge) necessarily calls for a significant reduction in livestock", notes the Court of Auditors - without giving a precise figure - which stresses that cattle farming is "responsible in France for 11.8% of CO2 equivalent emissions, comparable to those of residential buildings in the country", mainly because of the methane produced during the digestion of animals.
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Reconversion of the most difficult livestock farmers
According to its report, this decrease would in no way jeopardize the France's food sovereignty goals. "This reduction can be easily reconciled with the nutrition needs of the French, a third of them consuming more than the ceiling of 500 g per week of red meat recommended by the national nutrition and health plan," he points out.
On the other hand, the Court of Auditors suggests reviewing the support mechanisms for livestock farmers. "The logic of granting aid should evolve by crossing the axes of economic performance and socio-environmental performance. (...) It is a question of moving towards a model of exploitation that is both economically efficient and produces positive externalities for the environment or the economy of rural territories, "claims the institution. For breeders "most in difficulty", it recommends accompanying them "in a necessary reconversion", either "to other production systems", or outright to help them to "change their professional orientation". Enough to probably make the main interested parties cough.
Judging the current support mechanisms for retraining to be "insufficient", the Court of Auditors recommends broadening the base of beneficiaries and increasing appropriations for retraining. Another idea mentioned in the 137-page report, the Court of Auditors believes that "the production of energy (biogas by methanization, electricity in the context of agrivoltaism) can be an opportunity to be seized by French breeders", "as much to diversify incomes and to contribute to the energy transition".
