Denée explain themselves in front of 300 people, on October 3, 2024.” sizes=”(min-width: 1024px) 556px, 100vw” width=”664″ height=”443″/> In front of the gates of the Maine-et-Loire prefecture, in Angers, candidates for the takeover of a farm in Denée explain themselves in front of 300 people, October 3, 2024. JEAN-FRANÇOIS VALLÉE / PHOTOPQR / OUEST FRANCE / MAXPPP
Perched on a hillside overlooking the Loire, isolated in the middle of the lush meadows that surround it, the farm of Bruno and Chantal Simon inspires bucolic sweetness and calming of the soul. Do not trust it because this agricultural operation in Denée – a rural town of 1,400 inhabitants located 20 kilometers southwest of Angers, in Maine-et-Loire – is causing a wind of revolt to blow through the countryside. of Anjou.
On September 24, the Pays de la Loire Land Development and Rural Establishment Company (Safer) decided to entrust the exploitation of the 170 hectares left vacant by the Simon couple to their neighbors, already well-established farmers, under the noses of four young candidates for installation. A choice immediately contested by part of the rural world (the Peasant Confederation and organic farmers’ groups in particular) who see there the shadow of the majority union, the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions (FNSEA), rather aligned with the side of “conventional” agriculture. And who incidentally occupies twelve of the twenty-four seats on the board of directors of the regional Safer.
Four months before the elections in the chambers of agriculture, the file takes a political turn from the first moments while the question of the transmission and installation of young people is a major subject for French agriculture. The number of farms thus fell from 490,000 in 2010 to less than 390,000 in 2020, according to the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment.
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The four young people rejected by Safer, all aged 28 to 32, intended to combine suckler breeding and direct sales, cereal cultivation and organic market gardening as well as a bakery for making bread. A project very much in tune with the times but “not mature enough”according to Safer, which ignored the pedigree of those involved: two agricultural engineers, a cooperative advisor for setting up smallholder agriculture and a leader of an initiative center to promote agriculture and the rural environment.
More than 350 people in front of the prefecture
A profile of technicians which allowed them to raise exceptional funds (685,000 euros collected from 270 enthusiastic individuals in less than a month) and to convince Crédit Agricole to lend them 400,000 euros. The Pays de la Loire Conservatory of Natural Spaces has itself committed to purchasing around forty hectares located in a flood zone to facilitate their project.
