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PATRICK ALLARD/REA for TIME
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FARMING COUNTRY: The Cusells — Max, left, and his son Elbert, right — couldn't afford a farm in the Netherlands. Now, they keep 55 dairy cows and raise pigs on their leased land in central France
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The Grass Is Greener in France |
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Across Europe farming faces an uncertain future. In Limoges, NICHOLAS LE QUESNE discovers why so many foreigners flock to France to till the soil |
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Posted Sunday, April 14, 2002; 15.05GMT
Graham Savage is kneeling in damp straw with a newborn lamb in his arms, its fleece still slick with yellow afterbirth. "When you've done 500 of these day and night over six weeks, you're tired, believe me," he grins. There's a touch of Dorset in his vowels, as there is in the lush green meadows that roll toward tree-studded hillcrests outside the shed, yet we're a long way from the English West Country. Just 50 km to the south, Max Cusell is herding his black-and-white Friesians out to pasture through thick mud. The surrounding valley has nothing in common with the flatlands of the Netherlands, but Cusell calls out to his cattle in his native Dutch. Here in the Limousin region, deep in central France, a new European agriculture is taking root. As local French abandon the countryside for the cities, farmers from elsewhere in the E.U. are eagerly filling the places left vacant.
Farming and the countryside still occupy a special place in the French psyche. When the annual agriculture trade show was held in Paris in February and March, 600,000 visitors — including no fewer than 11 presidential candidates — flocked to admire the livestock on display. France is still Europe's leading producer, accounting for 23% of the E.U.'s agricultural output, and farmland still covers 51% of the country, but French farming faces an uncertain future. Between 1988 and 2000, more than a third of the country's farms disappeared. Today, farmers and their dependents account for just 3.5% of the population, down from 12% in 1970. The decline has been particularly dramatic in isolated rural regions like Limousin, where the farming community has shrunk by 40% in the past 12 years.
Despite its diminished appeal to the French, farming in France has begun to look very attractive to some European neighbors. "Whenever a farm comes onto the market round here, if a French farmer's not interested it's immediately snapped up by a Dutchman or an Englishman," Cusell explains. Because land is cheaper, commodity prices are higher and young farmers are helped by state-funded programs, many non-French figure France offers a better chance at success.
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