Meat production continues to decline, with a 10% reduction in the French cattle herd in six years, due to a lack of buyers.
“Even if I have the age and the years of contributions, as long as the plots are in my name, I cannot retire”. Maryse Célérier is two years away from retirement and is still actively looking for a buyer for the family farm in Saint-Amand Le Petit in Haute-Vienne. “I had a good dozen contacts who were supposed to come in February but I haven’t heard from them.” The Agricultural Show, which opens on Saturday February 25, could create vocations.
For three years now, Maryse Célérier has had difficulty transferring her 53 hectares of land to organic farming and caring for her few hundred dairy and meat cows. His son followed another path. Rolled-up sleeves, short salt-and-pepper hair, this cattle breeder, who took over the business 40 years ago, never stops. “When you have breeding, whatever the time, you have to be there. It’s been three years since we went on vacation because we haven’t found anyone to replace us”
“You have to be both an accountant and a manager, a veterinarian and a mechanic, and have the fiber of breeding.”
Maryse Celerieron franceinfo
According to her, this lack of buyer is explained by the versatility required by this exciting but not very lucrative profession, with a low salary, fluctuating meat prices and soaring energy costs.
“You have to be on all fronts”
Maryse Célérier would like not to end up having to sell her land to a neighboring farmer, like others. “The herd of cattle, even though they took over part of it, has never been so big.t than what the transferor had. This also explains part of the decline in livestock in general.
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In France, the cattle herd has fallen by 10% in six years. In Limousin, cattle production is also declining. “The way we practice livestock farming today is of little or no interest to this new generation, these new project leaders who may be interested in agriculture”, explains Philippe Babaudou, member of the office of the Haute-Vienne peasant confederation, who wants to encourage the system of mixed farming.
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“We have to think about more diversified, more mixed models, adds the breeder. Perhaps with fewer animals but in which we would find a new complementarity, to be invented no doubt, between plant systems and animal production systems. .” According to him, this would be one of the ways to contain the decline in the number of cows while meat imports jumped by nearly 25% last year. In Japan, faced with the shortage of breeders, some have equipped their animals with sensors, a kind of connected watch for cows.
In Haute-Vienne, this cattle breeder is looking for buyers to retire: report by Sandrine Etoa-Andegue
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