Ie living room! A no-brainer for many farmers. With, randomly in the aisles, a camera that can drag on for a few seconds on a wine stand, a charcuterie platter, an Aubrac with onyx-rimmed eyes, a cheese tasting, the gaze of a child holding a chick, stroking a lamb. Whether commercial or bucolic, the scope of the image is never negligible. The politicians who follow one another for 9 days at Porte de Versailles are obviously aware of this. They hope to consolidate their sympathy capital by showing that they know how to listen to rural grievances by raising their elbows on occasion, by having a bite to eat if necessary and, at least for the photo, by cajoling a few rumps between two sips of Jurançon and a portion of Saint-Nectaire.
And this, even if it is necessary in passing, as did Elisabeth Borne “whisper” some restrictions to come on the use of phytosanitary products or, among other announced storms, on irrigation as mentioned by the Minister for Ecological Transition. Everything then seems permitted and forgiven in the euphoria of these meetings where the farmer can toast with the minister almost as simply as at the local bistro, where the magic of the countryside reconciles rural and urban.
And then there are the others, those who didn’t come for that. Those who have come here to track down the fault, denounce the practices, publicize their fights. Like the deputy journalist Aymeric Caron who tweets: “Passing through the Agricultural Show, which is, alas, always that of agro-industry. The animals exhibited before going to the butcher’s are not happy there. The agriculture of the future must be vegetated, pesticide-free and offer worthy income to each farmer. “And the parliamentarian to support the REV, a movement he himself created, seen demonstrating in front of what he calls “the intensive agriculture fair”. A show largely dedicated to breeding which has therefore enabled him, so to speak at home, to promote his anti-speciesist ideals.
READ ALSOA (dis)enchanted night at the Agricultural ShowAnd so on, with Yannick Jadot, MEP, who declared on the set of France 5: “When agriculture is 50% of our water consumption, 80% in summer… we have to change our model agricultural! This government and our agricultural model for so many years have favored overconsumption of water. “Arguments taken up on social networks by Marine Tondelier, new patron saint of environmentalists who comes to amend this non-exhaustive list of accusations brought against a profession during the week dedicated to it.
Are we witnessing such a flood of media during Parisian events devoted to the automobile, building, tourism, real estate or chocolate? No, because the farmer has become the ideal client, the one who Correspondent, on France 2, at On the front, on France 5, via Subjectively, on France Inter, is considered to be the poisoner, the official destroyer of all biodiversity. Let us note in this regard this sentence from the landscape gardener writer Gilles Clément who declared, again on France Inter: “Me, I am surrounded by cattle farms: we no longer find beetles on cow dung, because they are processed. Ah, well, treated with what? That this gentleman launches into such assertions, because he may never have come to lift a dung on the Aubrac or in the Pyrenees still passes, but that he is authorized to do so on a public service antenna is unacceptable. France Inter, like France Télévisions moreover, by broadcasting this kind of message is complicit in a form of disinformation with regard to agricultural practices.
And it is there, during the Salon de l’agriculture, taking advantage of the media prism granted to this event, that the bans and the back bans of ecology mobilize and gesticulate to condemn conventional agriculture, from the smallest provincial newspaper with the most important national circulations. Yes “condemn”, because it is obviously by stigmatizing it that this activity will end up letting go to give way to the steamroller of imported goods. A interference that is just as dangerous as it is irresponsible, endorsed by part of the media galaxy. Which prefers to peasant knowledge the ignorance of certain idealists whose degree of agronomic competence is distressing.
Like the cuckoo, the ambassadors of ecology, failing to want to express themselves on the ground in front of the peasants, make their nest in that of others. When, from the support given to those who destroy the water reservoirs to the activists who visit the farms with impunity, passing through the Assemblies and the television studios, they occupy the political and media space 365 days a year.
Perhaps quite simply because, unlike agriculture, ecology is not a profession. Perhaps quite simply because it is more complicated to produce to feed than to campaign to sell ideas.
*Jean-Paul Pelras is a writer, former agricultural trade unionist and journalist. Editor-in-chief of the newspaper The Agri Pyrénées-Orientales and Aude, he is the author of around twenty essays, short stories and novels, winner of the Mediterranean Roussillon prize for A murder for memory and the Alfred-Sauvy Prize for The Old Boy. His latest work, The Journalist and the Peasant, was published by Talaia editions in November 2018.