Par Emilie Salabelle
Published on
Going from the field to the plate in Île-de-France? Today’s utopia, yesterday’s reality. If Paris is, during the time of the Salon de l’Agriculture (until March 5, 2023), the epicenter of the rural world, the vegetable culture of the region can be summed up in a few things. Today, it represents no more than 10% of what Ile-de-France residents consume in fruit and vegetables. And yet… At the end of the 19th century, 95% of plants eaten in the region were locally produced. Overview of the rich market gardening past of Paris and its surroundings.
A variety of fruits and vegetables in Île-de-France
A strawberry from Meudon, a large artichoke from Versailles or a white onion from Bobigny… Île-de-France harbors an unsuspected botanical heritage. There are around ten Ile-de-France vegetable terroirs over the centuries, according to a Paris Region Institute study (IPR).
The golden age of these Ile-de-France cultures dates from the second half of the 19th century. Faced with growing demand from the capital, agricultural production is developing. Paris, with its surroundings, is one of first producers of vegetables in France. In the City of Light, market gardeners grow “fine” vegetables, such as asparagus or artichokes, which sell for a high price.
In the suburbs, less noble “large vegetables” were grown, such as potatoes, carrots, cabbage or turnips, which sold at lower prices and constituted the basis of peasant or working-class diet.
An intensive production model
Far from opposing urbanization, market gardening uses the properties of the city to provide intensive production: horse manure and urban sludge serve as fertile soil and allow colossal returns : “On 1 m², using 1 m3 of water and 1 m3 manure, a market gardener produces 25 kg of vegetables! “, Details the IPR.
In the 19th century, these techniques, between the rural and the urban, extended to towns in the inner suburbs, such as Issy, Bobigny, Stains, Créteil or Montrouge. Around Aubervilliers, in 1870 the Plaine des vertus supplied up to three-quarters of large vegetables to Paris.
Varieties adapted to local specificities
Each land has its own vegetable: in the southwest, where the soil is clayey-sandy, dry beans are grown; on the southern slopes, strawberries, and in the clay soils of the north, cabbages. A dozen varieties of turnips coexist, each differing from the others by the properties of the soil where it grew.
The reputation of the basin’s products is such that nearly 150 new varieties take on the names of the surrounding villages: peas from Clamart, sorrel from Belleville, onions from Vertus, cabbage from Vaugirard, asparagus from Argenteuil… The capital is not to be outdone, and notably markets a long Parisian white cucumber, a yellow from Paris…
Île-de-France, the country’s leading vineyard
Île-de-France also had a wine-growing past. In 1780, 4,400 Ha of vines were counted, making it the most important vineyard in the country. With the arrival of the railway in 1840, Ile-de-France winegrowers abandoned this activity to gradually become producers of fruit and vegetables.
Les Halles, belly of Paris
All these cultures have the same point of convergence: the Halles de Paris. The closest market gardeners sell their products directly, while the furthest farms call on fairground vendors to deliver their produce to the “tiles des Halles”. Every day more than 5,000 cars cross the gates of the capital to join them. This neuralgic point, congested, makes circulation hellish.
In 1930, despite the arrival of the railway and the competition that set in between the different regions, Île-de-France was still one of the main breeding grounds for production, particularly for melons, carrots, lettuces, strawberries, radishes, cauliflower, cabbage, turnips and tomatoes.
Small producers supplanted by national competition
It was in the second half of the 20th century, marked by the transfer of Les Halles to Rungis in 1969, that small local producers disappeared, to the benefit of large producers and wholesalers. The Parisian market gardeners are absorbed by the productions coming from all over France by the rail.
“Today, two-thirds of fruit and vegetable imports arrive in Île-de-France via the route. The emblematic primeurs train, which carries 40,000 tonnes of goods from Perpignan to Rungis each year (equivalent to 2,5000 trucks per year) is threatened, despite ecological imperatives, ”recounts the IGP.
A revival of the Ile-de-France region?
From now on, vegetable production in the Ile-de-France essentially boils down to lettuces, carrots, cabbage, turnips and potatoes. The diversity of yesteryear has disappeared. Market gardening has been replaced by field cultivation in diversification and field crop farms, for a total area of 4,430 Ha in 2017, compared to 20,000 Ha in 1960.
At a time when short circuits and ecological discourse are pushing for a return to the local, what future for fruit and vegetables in Île-de-France? Avenues of reflection are underway to adapt urban microclimates to a new way of farming : urban heating, data centers, methanisation could contribute to producing the food of tomorrow.
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