There is of course currently the unease of farmers who are expressing themselves loudly, demonstrations, spectacular actions, the government’s responses… The week has been eventful. Deciphering this crisis with sociologist Jean Viard.
franceinfo: For you, given the situation, what we need is a real new agricultural pact ? A pact between society and farmers, why ?
Jean Viard: Yes, because the farmers have the impression of being the last place at Waterloo in the Guard, who dies or does not surrender. That’s their feeling, including because the number of farms is constantly decreasing, etc. Why do they have this feeling? Because it is a profession which is a profession of uncertainty, by definition, the climate, we do not know, etc. The harvest began two months before, 30 years ago, we harvest at night, in certain places. Our lifestyles have changed, with consequences, obviously. The question of the wolf, look at the Cisteron dam, there are a lot of people coming down from the mountain.
Basically, we have lots of uncertainties in the profession, with global warming, and we’re adding to it: we’re opening the borders to chickens who don’t have the same standards. Within Europe, the standards are different, so you don’t have the same salary, you don’t have the same standards between France, Poland, etc. You have a single market, but different standards. In itself, none of these new uncertainties is problematic, it is their combination that makes everything explode.
However, where France is original is that we are the only major democracy to have built our modernity on agriculture. You see, the English built it on industry, the Germans built it on industry. We carried out land reform, it’s called the French Revolution. We divided the land that was aristocratic, or religious, between farmers, and we made a huge land reform in 1789.
1789, would this therefore be a first agricultural pact?
It’s a pact, it wasn’t made for that, but in fact, we gave the land to the peasants on a massive scale. There are regions where it was already like that, but we don’t have time to go into details. So there, we made, first thing, peasant owners. Second thing, after the Paris Commune, Jules Ferry, the Republicans, decided that it was necessary to root the Republic in the countryside.
We did two things: 36,000 municipalities, 500,000 local elected officials and then, we put 500,000 people on the SNCF, it was a little later, and so, basically, we rooted the peasantry, it served as our guarantor policy. She was poor, often only feeding herself.
Currently, a farmer feeds 100 people; At the time, he basically barely fed more than his family. But we went to Algeria, we went to Africa, we fed off the colonies. This is the second model for stabilizing the Republic, a political mission. We made them soldiers, we made them fighters of 14-18, heads of families.
So, this is the second pact, second part of the 19th century?
Second pact, political, not at all food. Then comes the independence of the colonies. Algeria becomes independent, de Gaulle arrives. De Gaulle said: food independence, central issue, and nuclear power to protect ourselves. To protect ourselves from nuclear power and we feed each other, we set boundaries and we feed each other. Third food pact: we go from 3 million farms to, say 400,000.
But at the time, there were still 900,000! So we concentrate the farms, and the intelligence of the model is Edgard Pisani who was a very great French politician who said to himself: how am I going to move this new pact forward? He said to himself: I’m going to go see the women, Catholics, farmers, and I’m going to tell them: “I’m financing cohabitation between generations.” He financed the cutting of the farms in two, and the couples finding themselves a little more private, and less under the power of the mother-in-law, if I may say so…
Yes, that in short, a couple of 30-year-old farmers do not find themselves living with their parents?
That’s it and in exchange, he said: you are going to do technical agriculture, so diesel, and then chemistry. This is where we had this productivist model, which effectively supported French agriculture, and the farmers, each time, did things. That’s what’s fascinating. Every time, they do what they are asked. And today, for 30 years, we have known very well that the previous pact is outdated, to be built on chemistry and technology.
But at the same time, when you look at the demonstrations, have you seen the size of the tractors? Look at photos of protests 25 years ago, but the tractors are half the size. For what ? Because the farms are twice as large, and therefore, another model is being put in place. Except there is no agreement, there is no contract.
We have entered the era of management of living things, there is a pact to be made on this living thing. Do we want to guarantee Europe’s food independence? I think this is the first issue. It must be said that Europe must be independent in terms of food. The second issue is how do we adapt to global warming? And the problem, but it is also true in industrial matters, is that the ecological revolution requires large investments, but that does not increase turnover or margin. In the steel industry, we need to invest 1.5 billion more to stop polluting. But afterward, the turnover is the same, so how do we finance it? Farms are the same question.
So there is a lot at stake. Farmers know living things in an extraordinary way, all day long, this is the question they ask themselves: is it too dry, is it raining, is it are there earthworms? It’s their daily life. And we must learn to respect this knowledge so that we can all move forward together in a more ecological society.