Nicole Faires

One of the things I got to do over my summer of research was to ask questions of a young man in France about what he eats, and he revealed a few things about French agriculture that blew me away.

First of all, this young man was in his very early 20’s, a university student, and single.  But, unlike the young college boys we have over here, he never ate processed food.  Ever.  When he planned his dinner, he went down to the market and bought a chicken directly from the farmer.  An uncooked fryer was about $10.  He would roast it up with some vegetables and a few well-chosen spices.  He would have some gourmet cheese on the side, but he didn’t think of it as gourmet cheese - it was just cheese.  He had never eaten cheddar.  On top of it all, cheddar here is twice as expensive as his gourmet cheese.  

His lifestyle, he explained, is typical.  When he got together with his college buddies, they never order a pizza and throw back some beers.  It’s locally-grown home-cooked meals and a glass of wine, every day.  

What’s especially important about this story is that he could afford it, and not just barely afford it - good food is cheap there and easy to find.

France has about 65 million people living within 260,000 square miles.  A whopping 7% of France are farmers and fishermen, on about 750,000 farms. Compare that to the 2% of Americans in farming on 2 million farms for 312 million people living in 3.8 million square miles.

That’s one French farm for every 86 French people, vs. one US farm for every 156 Americans.  France has almost double the farms America has.  

Is it because France has more farmland? Nope.  They look like they are pretty crowded, but they still use 3/5 of their land area for farming.  Is it because American farmers are more efficient?  Well if that were true, wouldn’t food be monumentally less expensive in the US?  But it’s not, at least not for good food of equivalent quality.

Factory farming in France exists, and you can go to a chain grocery store there.  But there are a plethora of small farmers in France who produce massive quantities of food, especially in the greater urban areas.  Paris has a bunch of tiny urban farms around it that are said to provide 35% of the food available in the city.

Part of France’s success, I believe, stems from the fact that they invented French Intensive gardening.  In the 1890’s there was a 2 acre plot outside Paris.  It was covered in rich manure and compost and the plants were crowded so closely together that when an American saw the place for the first time he couldn’t believe they were growing.  Not only were they growing, they grew amazing!  It is this method that inspired bio-intensive farming and later even Permaculture.

Keep in mind too that all meat in France has no antibiotics, growth hormones and they aren’t fed animal by-products.  AND France is food sovereign.  That’s right, France grows all of its own food AND has enough to be the large exporter of food in Europe, and in fact is second in the whole world, after the US.  Without all the nasty stuff.

What’s France’s secret?  I believe it is because France has a totally different mindset.  City dwellers are encouraged to keep bees and grow gardens, and gardening is part of most school’s curriculum. Farmers on very small plots abound just on the edges of the city and in the city, and they charge a reasonable price to compete with each other.   People have embraced the backyard chicken movement and no one questions the right to grow food in your own yard.  These small city farms are driving France’s food security forward.  Shouldn’t we be doing the same?