AgroParisTech students call on their classmates to “desert”

The tone is set, from the first seconds of the speech. On the podium of the graduation ceremony for students from AgroParisTech, a prestigious school of agricultural engineers, Lola Keraron denounced, on Saturday April 30, a “training which pushes globally to participate in the ongoing social and ecological devastation”, before engaging, with his comrades, in a regular critique of agribusiness and capitalism.

“We do not believe that we need ‘all agriculture’. Rather, we see that agribusiness is waging a war on the living and on the peasantry everywhere on earth. We do not see science and technology as neutral and apolitical We believe that technological innovation or start-ups will not save anything but capitalism”continues the young woman, to the applause of her comrades gathered at Salle Gaveau in Paris.

The collective, called “des agros qui bifurquent”, calls on students to leave the classic curriculum. “Let’s desert before we’re stuck with financial obligationslaunches one of them, before referring to the climate crisis. Let’s not wait for the 12th report of the IPCC which will show that States and multinationals have only aggravated the problems and which will place its last hopes in popular revolts”.

This is not the first time that high school students have taken a radical stand on ecology. In 2018, a student from Centrale Nantes made a similar speech during his graduation ceremony. At AgroParisTech, students had blocked their campus in 2021 to protest against the sale of the site to a real estate developer.