Every weekend with the sociologist Jean Viard, we stop on an event that is happening on the other side of the world or in a small village in France, whether it involves the powerful or Mr. and Mrs. everyone. The important thing is that they illustrate a social issue. And we are leaving today, Évron in Mayenne, where the Meat Festival is held until tomorrow.
franceinfo: This meat festival was created in 1966 and it is today that the spotlight is on it, on this profession of breeder too, who is facing change?
John Viard: We are in the middle of a social debate on how we eat, to do what, with which body? And besides, I think it’s good to start this column by talking about agriculture. Farmers suffered a lot this summer, and we saw clearly during the pandemic that food sovereignty, along with health sovereignty, are central sovereignty that we had let go a little. But what is the relation to meat?
In fact, 89% of French people like meat and around 80% think it is necessary for the balance of the body. But at the same time, more and more of them are eating less. We are not facing an explosion of people who do not want to eat meat, there are. There are 1 to 2% of vegetarians, but basically, that’s quite peripheral. For now anyway. On the other hand, there is a new relationship to the body. We no longer have the body of strength that our parents and ancestors had before, carrying 60-kilo bags, etc., and we had the idea that meat was the engine of strength.
We have a different body, which lives much longer so we want it to be more attractive. We don’t spend it physically, but much more with the brain, at least most people, so we’re going to run, we’re going to walk, we’re going to swim, we’re going to have lots of other activities, and this body project there , it will basically lead to the development of a new diet. Basically, Thierry Marx says it very well: How to go from beef carrots to beef carrots. it’s an image, but it says evolution well. And suddenly, we eat 20% less meat than 30 years ago, it’s not that there are fewer people who eat it, it’s that we eat less.
So the problem for farmers is how they adapt to this development. And then, you know that cows pollute as much as 15 million cars, they fart, they burp, it’s as much CO2, so there’s gas and all of a sudden, there’s this whole ecological question that arises . So we’re going to do the hybrid cow, it’s the cow that doesn’t eat the same thing, and therefore it reduces its gas production by 20%. But that doesn’t solve the question.
And in addition there is another thing that must be said, it is that Mediterranean populations arrive in France, from the Maghreb in particular, who in fact do not have a culture of cow meat, who have a culture sheep and a culture of lamb, goat, so they tend to keep their traditions. In a couscous, there is no cow. Couscous is the favorite dish of the French. So it also shows that this food culture has replaced beef with carrots, there is all that at stake.
Farmers who also have to rethink their communication software, especially on farming and breeding methods?
But it is very good that farmers are getting into the communication battle because communication was occupied by urban people who have never raised a cow. The problem with animals is that they “hold” the territory. You can’t just cut out part of the breeding. Because what do we do with the territories, we saw with the forests? It is clear that we must hold the floors.
The second thing is that it also has to be affordable, because there are also a lot of people who don’t eat meat, because it’s expensive. And don’t forget that a large part of our food is made in collective catering, in high schools, etc., with prices that are not the same. Farmers have to adapt, they have already done a lot of adaptation work.