Ovalie, a five-year-old Salers cow raised by two young farmers from Puy-de-Dôme, will be the face of the next Paris Agricultural Show from February 25 to March 5, organizers announced Tuesday. This rustic mountaineer, champion of breeding in an austere environment, allows the show to honor a young couple of breeders for the first time, for a 2023 edition on the theme “everyday life”.
“In this world in transition – energetic, ecological, social – farmers are the sentinels of life. They are committed to doing it well, to being in touch with reality”, affirms the president of the salon, Jean-Luc Poulain, quoted in a press release. The Agricultural Hall, the annual high mass of La Ferme France and a popular meeting place for politicians, had attracted just over 500,000 visitors in 2022, an election year and great reunions after the cancellation of the 2021 edition due to the health crisis. The 2023 edition will have “everyday life” as its theme.
Ovalie, mahogany in color and with fine lyre-shaped horns, was chosen for “its adaptability, its economic profitability, its ease of driving and its autonomy”: qualities that make the Salers “a breed perfectly adapted to the challenges of social conditions and the installation of new breeders”, according to the organizers. Mainly bred in the Massif Central, the Salers represents 220,000 cows from a French herd of approximately 18 million head, giving meat with marbled grain and rich cheeses (Cantal, Bleu d’Auvergne, Saint-Nectaire…).
651,000 fewer dairy cows
Ovalie, who owes her name to her owners’ passion for rugby, comes from the cradle of this breed of good nurses. She was born to the first generation born on the farm of Marine and Michel Van Simmertier, 34 and 32 years old. Marine Van Simmertier left an office job in the agricultural sector 5 years ago to join the farm started by her husband, which they now manage together within a common agricultural enterprise (GAEC).
It is “the face of a new generation of farmers” that the show wants to highlight, in a difficult context for livestock, aggravated by the war in Ukraine and the rise in the price of animal feed. France has lost 651,000 cows (dairy and beef) in five years, estimated the French Livestock Institute (Idele) at the beginning of 2022, that is, so many cows that they have not produced calves, which has caused a reduction in the herd of more than 10 %
Source: BFM TV
