Children love spinach puree and turnip soup. To believe it, you have to stop by the Paul-Vaillant-Couturier crèche in Villejuif (Val-de-Marne). First come across the market gardener who delivers her leeks, carrots, turnips, squash and sweet potatoes, her spinach, celery, chard and onions, as beautiful as organic, picked the day before in Tannerre-en-Puisaye, in the Yonne.
Then chat with the cook, Chadhuli Moindjie, whose knife is already reducing the turnips into small cubes. His smile says all the pleasure “touch these good vegetables that come from the farm”. Then salivate while listening to the director of the crèche, Florence Arondel, apple red clogs on her feet, who evokes “the smell of butternut puree or turnips cooking”. “Nothing to do with frozen or canned foods before. The little ones love it, they drink the soups from the bowl! » Finally meeting a father – Bakari, sports instructor – happy that food is being offered to his daughter Abbi here “downright beneficial” but expensive than him “don’t buy often, unfortunately”. Abbi, 2 and a half years old, pacifier under pink hood, is not yet old enough to proclaim her love of seasonal organic vegetables.
Going back to the sources of the tasty turnip soup leads on the dirt road to the municipal farm. Because Villejuif, in the first and dense suburbs of Paris, now grows its own organic vegetables, like 93 other French towns and villages. For four or five years, the mayor who cannot talk about his communal farm, his recruitment of an organic market gardener, his “food city” deputy or “food sovereignty” almost failed in its life as a city councilor.
“We reconcile the urban and the agricultural”
Pierre Garzon, that of Villejuif, where six daycare centers have recently been supplied with municipal carrots, benefited from a helping hand by chance: “We were looking to buy land for the many children in our leisure centers whose horizons are too limited. » To go green, the municipality is looking for a field with a water point less than two hours away because… “We ended up finding one, in Yonne, continues the mayor (French Communist Party), elected in 2020. It was a 13-year-old organic market garden farm which was put up for sale due to lack of outlets. A mess ! At the same time, we could not find suppliers in Ile-de-France to increase organic in our canteens. We bought very expensive fruits and vegetables sometimes coming from the other side of the planet…”
There was plenty to agree on. Except that public procurement has its constraints, which prevent favoring a particular local producer. “So we bought the farm, its 12 hectares, three of which were already cultivated, Mr. Garzon account. And the market gardener became a municipal employee. » Logically the opposition was opposed, he remembers. “I was the Bolshevik nostalgic for the collective farms…” But the majority itself has divided. Was producing cabbage and carrots really the mission of a city? Mr. Garzon believed in it, the farm acquired on October 24 delivered its first boxes of vegetables at the beginning of November. The market gardener who runs it, Isabelle Gauffeny, has gained permanent employment, a salary (2,400 euros net per month), weekends, in a word the ” serenity “, she whispers.
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