Pstare into a cauliflower head and discover infinity… Others have done it before you. Like the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot who swooned, not in front of headed cabbages, but in front of those endowed with“a rough surface rich in invariance”in his own words.
This vegetable offers, in fact, an example of a fractal structure, masterfully drawn by Mother Nature. Its geometry is therefore similar at all observation scales. Hold on to the leaves so you don’t get dizzy. When you cut the cauliflower, you get bouquets, which themselves are subdivided into florets and so on. And the design remains the same. What a story ! Flower tale cauliflower…
However, on the stalls, the cauliflower does not have a big head. He even plays low profile during festive periods. But hope, if the cold returns, to find its place on the plates, in the form of soups or gratins. The market gardeners, meanwhile, are rubbing their hands. “Rates are ok so far”recognizes Marc Kerangueven, president of Prince de Bretagne, and himself a producer of field vegetables in Lannilis in Finistère.
A relief after a very complicated 2021-2022 campaign. From January 2022, prices plummeted and even shrunk by 50% in March and April, before ending in crisis in May. Then, in summer, during planting for the new season, heat and drought hit France without sparing Brittany.
New expectations
“It is very rare for the mercury to exceed 35°C in Brittany. There were yield losses, smaller sizes. But the cauliflower is resistant, and with the autumn rains, the quality has returned. “, explains Mr. Kerangueven. As a result, the Ministry of Agriculture is now counting on 2022-2033 production increasing by 8% to 227,000 tonnes.
However, even in his Breton stronghold, the cauliflower heads are losing ground over the years. “In the 1970s, three products, cauliflower, artichokes and potatoes, accounted for 90% of Prince de Bretagne’s turnover. Today, it is only 30%, and the most sold vegetable is the tomato”, says Mr. Kerangueven. He points out that cauliflower production has been halved in twenty years. However, this vegetable, which does not tolerate frost, is exported to Germany and Great Britain, and is one of the few to contribute to the French trade balance.
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