“We are going through a very special, serious, difficult period, which requires everyone’s mobilization,” said Emmanuel Macron in a speech at Terres de Jim, the annual gathering of young farmers, taking place this weekend in Outarville. (Loiret ), in Beauce.
“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, that is the key to maintaining this sovereignty and not wake up tomorrow with a hangover”, he added at the end of his speech.
After recalling the different emergency measures adopted by the Government to support the agricultural sectors in recent months, he insisted on the need to “get out of dependence” on fertilizers and inputs from Russia and Belarus, and face the rise in energy prices, “which is a weapon of war” for Moscow.
The renewal of generations in 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 change in agriculture, while some 100,000 farms should change operators by 2030.
He proposed that consultations be held in the next six months in order to implement “a renewal and future pact for agriculture”, which will involve, in particular, an “agricultural orientation and future in 2023”, which should set a course for 2030 .
It will be a time of exchanges “on issues of orientation, training, transmission and transition” between the Ministry of Agriculture, professionals, regions… that will allow setting the parameters of the law.
A fund endowed with 400 million euros
Emmanuel Macron indicated that a “network of innovative agricultural business incubators” will be created, and €20 million will be invested in agricultural education as part of the France 2030 competition fund.
It has also announced that a “living fund for entrepreneurs” will be “endowed with 400 million euros” to help “young people to settle down, to ease the burden 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 agroecological transition with the key, in some cases, of a change in crops, adaptation to the climate and the development of “carbon-farming”, that is, massively developing carbon . sequestration on agricultural land.
Source: BFM TV
