“I have always been inhabited by a humanistic sensibility and close to the environment, transmitted by my parents and reinforced by the counterexample that was the bourgeois environment of my childhood. By dint of rubbing shoulders with people obsessed with having and power, we end up understanding that the essential is elsewhere and that happiness cannot be bought. My five younger brothers and sisters also have this awareness of societal issues and, if we all grew up in Paris and went to higher education, our life itineraries took us away from the capital and classic patterns, to make us us orient towards the general interest. My sister Camille was the first to take the plunge, becoming a peasant in the Cotentin.
For my part, I studied chemical engineering in Toulouse, while being passionate about juggling. Once I graduated, I hesitated to go around the world with Clowns Without Borders, but I preferred to approach the trip from an ecological angle in relation to the question of water. I then left in 2005 with two friends, in a truck, for a long loop of two years around the world, before going back to sailing from the West Indies. I then met Louis-Albert de Broglie, the “gardener prince” and owner of the Deyrolle cabinet of curiosities (Paris 7e), which made me enter the professional world and switch to agroecology.
In parallel with my activity at Deyrolle, which consisted in creating and distributing educational posters on sustainable development, I discovered two things: biomimicry and crowdfunding. This led me to create Blue Bees, the first crowdfunding platform to make paid loans, entirely devoted to agroecology. As for biomimicry, that is to say innovation inspired by nature, that led me to permaculture. I obtained a professional license as a farm manager to set up an experimental farm in the castle of Louis-Albert, in Touraine.
The stated goal was to prove that an agroecological farm could be profitable, but, after two years, it was clear that the model, as beautiful as it was, could not work in the current economic system, which is very favorable to industrial agriculture and which does not count what “really” matters. Because we must add two glasses to our prism: human capital and natural capital, in addition to simple financial capital, to act in an enlightened and fair manner. Considering only the GDP alone, we condemn our common future.
I stopped eating meat seven years ago when I realized the impact it had on ecosystems. I turned to a vegetable and seasonal diet, without chemicals. Good organic and local products are, of course, a little more expensive, but, if we stop the meat, the budget is equivalent. Good products, well cooked, around a table with good friends, for me it is the essence of eating well. Escalivade, which is traditionally prepared over a wood fire, is a summer dish that I love, simple and delicious, which, in my opinion, has the virtue of convincing that eating vegetarian can be a real pleasure. “
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