Agriculture: Emmanuel Macron calls for “French consumption” to help the sector

the essential Present at Terres de Jim, the annual meeting of young farmers in Outarville, Emmanuel Macron called on the French to consume locally to save agriculture. Emmanuel Macron called on Friday September 9 to “buy” and “consume” French people because the defense of “agricultural and food sovereignty” is “the mother of battles” in the context of the war in Ukraine and the climate and energy crises. “We are going through a very special, serious, difficult period, which requires the mobilization of all”, declared the Head of State in a speech at Terres de Jim, the annual meeting of young farmers, which is held this weekend. -end in Outarville (Loiret), in Beauce. “Getting out of dependence on fertilizers” “This agricultural and food sovereignty” is “absolutely essential (…) it is the mother of battles” and “we need all our compatriots to understand that buying French , consuming French, loving our agriculture, this is the key to keeping this sovereignty and not waking up tomorrow with a hangover”, he added in concluding his speech. After recalling the various emergency measures taken by the government to support the agricultural sectors in recent months, he insisted on the need to “break out of dependence” on fertilizers and inputs from Russia and Belarus, and to face up to rising energy prices, “which is a weapon of war” for Moscow. “A renewal and future pact for agriculture” Accompanied by the Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau, the Head of State focused his visit to Terres de Jim this year on the sensitive issue of generational renewal in agriculture. , while some 100,000 farms are expected to change operators by 2030. He proposed that consultations be held in the next six months with a view to implementing “a renewal and future pact for the ‘agriculture”, which will notably go through a “law of orientation and agricultural future in 2023”, which must itself set a course for 2030. It will be a time of exchanges “on the subjects of ‘orientation, training, transmission and transition’ between the Ministry of Agriculture, professionals, regions… which will make it possible to set the parameters of the law. 20 million euros for agricultural education Emmanuel Macron indicated that a “network of incubators of innovative agricultural business entrepreneurs” will be set up, that 20 million euros will be invested for agricultural education in the framework of the competence fund of France 2030. He also announced that a “living entrepreneurs fund” will be “endowed with 400 million euros” to help “young people to settle, to smooth the load for several years and to carry out the essential transformations” to adapt to the ecological transition. For him, the preservation of agricultural land is linked to the agro-ecological transition with the key, in certain cases, to a change of cultures, adaptation to the climate, and the development of +carbon-farming+, that is to say developing massive carbon sequestration in agricultural soils.