A great classic for all the Élysée tenants. Launched in 1964, the Agricultural Show has seen all the presidents parade with more or less joy, among run overs, whistles and sometimes very muscular arrests.
Emmanuel Macron will spend a long time there this Saturday starting at 7 in the morning and will have to answer about the pension reform, record inflation and the ban on neonicotinoids.
• Charles de Gaulle, laconic visits and prunes from Agen
It was the General who was the first to open the dance of this tradition in 1965, for the second edition of the show, officially inaugurated a year earlier. Barely talkative with the farmers, the head of state is content to taste some prunes from Agen and chat with his ministers under the gaze of the ORTF cameras.
With a certain lyricism: to evoke the countryside, Charles de Gaulle evokes “the eternal return of the plow, the sowing and the harvest, these lands of legends, patois” and “his essentially rural genius”, in one of his works.
His second visit in 1968 is just as framed. The only significant exchange during the show lapses: his few questions about the future construction of the Halles de Rungis, then on the stage of the models.
Asked by a spectator about the state of mind of his wife Yvonne, the president does not answer and prefers to talk enthusiastically about Renault tractors. Before signing the guest book of the fair with a brief: “What an agricultural success.”
• Georges Pompidou, the first to caress cows
Very concerned about his communication, lover of beautiful shots for the press, Georges Pompidou undertook in 1969, a year after he came to power, a real walk through the bays of the Porte de Versailles. With a direct style: given the concerns of viticulturists about wine imports, the president does not hesitate to promise to personally address the issue.
“Anyway, I help you, I drink a lot of wine, you know,” he even tells an operator, who is not asked to talk about his home region: the Massif Central.
And to say that at his table at the Élysée we always find Cantal, that cheese that bears the name of the department in which it was born. Proof of his taste for moving among the cattle, which has one of the largest cow populations in France, the normalien is the first to launch a gesture now essential for any politician who wanders “the largest farm in France”: petting cows .
• Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, between Larzac and oil
The first visit of the then youngest president of the Fifth Republic in 1975 was all about hazing. Amidst the crowd, applause and boos in a France hard hit by inflation and the oil shock, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing ends his journey amidst the cries of the peasants of Larzac, in the midst of a confrontation with the State against the occupation of the plateau
Without reacting directly at the time, the Elysée tenant made his feelings known a few days later during a press conference. “There are institutions and we are not a regime of personal power. The problems of land use for public purposes must be resolved by the institutions”.
Two years later, the statesman made an express visit to the fair while launching: “agriculture must be our oil”, before the doubtful peasants. His last visit dates back to 1978. After several exchanges with farmer women, then considered without profession, the president created a veritable statute of “co-responsibility of farmer husbands”.
• François Mitterrand, a visit and then he leaves
The socialist went only once to the 1981 agricultural campaign fair, a few weeks before the presidential elections. But in 14 years at the Élysée, he hasn’t set foot there once, one exception.
These visits must be “above all the role of the Minister of Agriculture”, deciphers years later his agricultural adviser Henri Nallet, in the columns of subway news which also explains why the president sees in the rural world of that time a bastion of the right.
It must be said that relations between François Mitterrand and the FNSEA, the main agricultural union, were very complicated throughout his mandate, in the context of the enlargement of the European community to Spain and Portugal, considered as competitors by French farmers. With a symbol: the union had seen the appointment of Edith Cresson for Agriculture, the first woman appointed to this position, “a real provocation.”
• Jacques Chirac, 40 years in the salon
Becoming Minister of Agriculture in 1972, Jacques Chirac has walked the halls of the fair non-stop for almost 40 years. The only exception was in 1979, to recover from a traffic accident. Once at the Élysée, the Corrézien ritually dedicates himself every year to a marathon, spending up to 10 hours straight in the sections, multiplying the tastings, the drinks and the caressing of cows and other goats.
“These are not cattle, they are masterpieces”, this is how the president launched with a smile in 2005 when he arrived at the Limousin breed cow stand.
If Jacques Chirac then left a lasting mark on French agriculture with his symbolic imprint, his balance is more nuanced. Therefore, he has always ardently defended the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) at European level, often seen as an incentive for highly productive XXL farms.
His management of the two most serious crises that French agriculture experienced with mad cow disease and then with avian flu that decimated entire poultry farms is also criticized. His visits finally stop in 2011, 4 years after his departure from the Élysée. The former president is then too diminished.
• Nicolas Sarkozy and his “poor idiot”
Relatively discreet at the Salon de l’Agriculture on his first visit in 2006 -he spent barely two hours there, in the middle of the presidential campaign-, Nicolas Sarkozy left his mark on people’s memories by saying “break it, poor idiot” to a passerby who he refuses to shake hands in 2008, under the eye of the cameras.
Scarred by this episode that followed him throughout his five-year term, the president contented himself with a stopwatch visit the following year, surrounded by UMP activists and numerous bodyguards with only a little chocolate to sweeten.
In 2010, he skipped the opening of the show before finally catching up the day before it closed. In 2011, the campaign obliges, the president does everything possible, walks for 4 hours and judges that “the environment is beginning to go well”, putting into perspective the weight of environmental objectives in agricultural policy.
in his book “Time of Storms”published in July 2020, Nicolas Sarkozy evokes “his fault” committed in 2007, judging that he had “fallen into this trap as a beginner”.
• François Hollande and his joke
In February 2012, in the middle of the race for the Élysée, François Hollande had the luxury of breaking Jacques Chirac’s record and spent no less than 12 hours in the halls of the show. Visiting the following year, the head of state suffered a small controversy. To a child who tells him that he “has never seen Nicolas Sarkozy in real life,” the president replies an eye for an eye: “ah, well, you won’t see him anymore.”
His visits become more and more stormy, in parallel with the drop in his popularity rating. During the 2016 edition, the president was thus insulted by ranchers while protesters attacked the booth of the Ministry of Agriculture.
Correziano’s reaction: “I also came to hear these screams, which are screams of pain, of suffering,” as reported le figaro.
• Emmanuel Macron in campaign against “the president of the cities”
Egg-shot during the 2017 campaign, Emmanuel Macron made his first visit as president under tight security and with several spare suits if necessary. But that doesn’t stop him from escaping boos amid controversy over the upcoming glyphosate ban.
The following year, the 30-year-old player broke all records with a visit at 2:30 p.m. It must be said that three months before the Europeans and in the midst of the renegotiation of the CAP, the tenant of the Élysée wants to seduce farmers and get rid of his image of “president of the cities”. Some yellow vests try to get closer, but the security device keeps them at a distance.
After a year without a show due to Covid-19, the president returns to Porte de Versailles in 2021 before an express inauguration in 2022, shaken by the war in Ukraine that began two days earlier.
Source: BFM TV
