For 40 years, they gave themselves body and soul to their profession. “As a breeder, it’s an exciting job, but you shouldn’t count your hourssays Robert, 76 years old. Ewes, cows, they can give birth on a Saturday as well as on a Sunday, or at night”. Located in Chaillac, in the south of the Indre department, this former farmer recounts his years of hard work, a physical and exhausting work, alongside his wife Arlette. They were also family caregivers for their parents for years.
France Bleu Berry had already met this couple of Berry farmers in 2018 to discuss the issue of purchasing power. So four years later, what has changed? Admittedly, there has been a slight revaluation of pensions. Corn the cost of living has also increased. “Supermarket purchases, fuel, insurance for the house, for the car, complementary insurance, mutual insurance, medicines which are not all reimbursed… We are not rolling on gold”says Robert.
“We deserve a more adequate retirement than what we have today”, he believes. The couple say they live with around 700 euro pension each every month. “We get by because we garden, we harvest a lot, we hardly buy any vegetables, it saves money.explains Robert. We get there because we are not spendthrifts”. He also recounts the difficult access to care and fuel costs: “To get treatment, get an X-ray, you have to take the car and go to Châteauroux. 70 km one way, 70 km return, it’s huge”.
“We can’t go to the restaurant every Sunday, we rarely go on vacationcontinues the former farmer, with modesty. We are not unhappy, we are not going to complain”. But the concern is still felt. When everything increases, except pensions, how to anticipate the future? “If one day we have to go to a retirement home, it’s 2,200 euros per month, I don’t know how we’re going to do itsays Robert. The house will have to be sold. If it’s up to the children to pay when they are already struggling to get by, I don’t see how it can happen”.
Agricultural pensions are the lowest. We are below the poverty line
Their son took over the business several years ago. “It’s hard for him too.says his father. Like all the breeders in the area, he is struggling”.
Robert and Arlette would like farmers’ pensions to be upgraded. They also want the work of women farmers to be better taken into account. For a long time, many women worked in the shadows on farms, without necessarily being declared, and today find themselves, sometimes widowed, with meager pensions.