Episode 106: Living with the Earth with Perrine Hervé-Gruyer and Morag Gamble

In this episode, inspirational author and market gardener Perrine Hervé-Gruyer. When Perrine turned 30, she radically changed lanes from a career as an international lawyer working with the High Commissioner for Refugees, to becoming a small scale farmer using permaculture and bio-intensive methods in Normandy.

From finding permaculture in search of meaning to new frameworks for growing food, Perrine's practical approach has flipped the idea that only bigger farms can make a living - small-scale permaculture farms not only create diverse abundance, but are more efficient too!

Perrine has co-authored the freshly published book ‘Living with the Earth: A Manual for Market Gardeners, Permaculture Ecoculture:   Inspired by Nature’ - an inspirational manual in a three volume set, and it's absolutely mind blowing.  And before that, she's also written another fabulous book - ‘Miraculous Abundance: One Quarter Acre, Two French Farmers, and Enough Food to Feed the World’ !

Perrine has a big vision for the future of farming that enables and inspires the next generation to journey and thrive through small-scale ecological farming.

Transcript

Morag:

Well thank you so much for joining me on the show today Perrine. I am just absolutely delighted to be in conversation with you and hear about your farming experience, your philosophy around farming and the new version of the book that's coming out in English. Welcome to the show!

Perrine:

Thank you for having me.

Morag:

Oh, look, I am really excited. I've had a bit of a sneak peek inside of your latest book, Permanent Publications sent it through to me to have a look at them. It was the uncorrected proof. You've got Volume One, Two, and Three - Volume One is out and it’s an extraordinary tome full of wisdom and just practical genius, really. I love the way that it started. So the book is called The Living Earth: A Manual for Market Gardening. This came out in French first, so Permanent Publications is basically working with you to translate this into English, which is magnificent.

Perrine:

In French, they were released all at once. But in English, they found out that it might be better to release them one after the other. It's good actually. Because it's very important to go through the first one to be able to have the right settings and understand what's going to be said in the second one.

Morag:

Yeah, so the first one is really around your philosophy and around the design principles and how to approach the farm. I suppose the four chapters that I saw, you feed the people, heal the planet and ecosystem, nature school, designing a farm and then a natural approach to soil and fertility. I wanted to come to that very first chapter about feeding people and healing the planet. Because that to me feels like at the heart of this - that you came to farming as a way to approach the very big issues that we're facing in society. I read that you were an international lawyer to multinational companies and doing the high-flying life and you landed in this world of reconstructing what peasant farming looks like in the 21st century. Before we go into the book, what happened there? That's a big shift. Where did you bump into this other world or crack open a door and see a different way of being in the world? What went on here?

Perrine:

You know, it's funny to target added years after it because there was no logic at all. I used to work in Tokyo and then in Hong Kong, both with law firms and international companies. At some point, actually, people don't know much about this, but when SARS COVID, the first COVID hit in Hong Kong, I came back to France for just a few weeks then I decided I wanted to change to Korea. Whatever I was doing in the law field wasn’t making sense to me, it was intellectually challenging, very interesting, and I loved living abroad, speaking different languages, and being exposed to different cultures. I loved it.

But somehow there was a lack of meaning. Waking up every single morning and negotiating big contracts with huge companies for millions of dollars.That was a little meaningless for me, and I was already into what we are doing with our planet and our world. So I came back to France just to give it a thought and just have some rest and see my family. Then I decided, I will not go back to law.  But I was looking for a way to find something that would fit this need of meaning in my career.

Then I met Charles, we got married, so I had no choice but to stay in France and completely reimagine what my life would be in France. He had a little house in the country, one hour and a half drive away from Paris. We decided we wanted to fit in this little house, which was not a farm. We chose to reimagine our lives, even if we didn't know exactly what we would be doing to make a living. But it was pretty clear for us that it was the right time to make a change.

Then we started to grow our own food for the family we're creating for the children and so on. Charles said, “Well, I'd like to become a farmer. I've always dreamt of being a farmer. And I would like to give it a try.” I said, “Okay, go ahead. I'm not gonna do that!” You know, my personal idea of farming was I would be selling vegetables. I had no idea what I would do with my life, just selling vegetables and I wasn't feeling happy about it.

But when he started working on the farm, we managed to buy some land around the house. We were very lucky actually, at the time to be able to buy enough land to start farming. Step by step, I gave him a hand and you know the story, you start with the finger and then you get fully involved. That's how we started, we started organic from day one, there was no question whatsoever. When we were doing in our own garden for the family, for the children, we wanted our customers to know that it was exactly the same, it was clean. That's how we started - with a lot of naivety, we were so naive, so idealistic, we thought that we could grow things in summer, and then do something else in winter.

But then, very, very early in the industry, the customers came to us and they were looking desperately for organic products, because at that time, we're talking 18 years ago, they couldn't find organic products in the countryside. Which is crazy, because I thought to myself I could find those everywhere. But it was not the case anymore. All those little farms, they were gone, disappeared already and that's it. They said “it's okay for us to have your products in summer, but we want them also in winter.” So they kind of pushed so that we would grow all the time and the service started like this.

At the time we started, we knew nothing about permaculture, and then we found out about it afterward. It kind of saved me because maybe I wouldn't have been a farmer all those years without this amazing intelligence of nature.

Morag:

So can we just talk about that, because you didn't actually have any farming experience before you started this venture. It wasn't really something that you'd grown up with. It was just brand new. How did permaculture help? I've seen you write about that when permaculture came in really because you were looking at all these different theories. What was it about permaculture for you that really helped to land it and give it shape?

Perrine:

Somehow, through the permaculture screen, everything suddenly made sense, because from day one, we wanted to produce healthy food, local and according to the season, that was okay. We wanted to protect the environment, we didn't want to use oil at all, because the peak oil idea was pretty big in the English world at the time, not so well known in the French world, but we knew that at some point, especially farmers, wouldn't be able to afford the price of oil for whatever usage, either for cars or heating purposes or whatsoever. So we knew that from day one, we wanted to use as little fossil fuels as possible.

Permaculture enabled us to kind of integrate and merge all those elements all together. It was not a plan just to achieve one after the other. It brought some harmony to all those things and we could say that we didn’t want to protect the environment. We were proud enough to say that we wanted to create proper environments. So actually, we created some soil and so on. But we had no clue at all of what may be some clues according to what you learn in school and stuff. But what was an ecosystem? Really? How did it work? How could we mimic the ecosystems on the farm to be able to produce as much as possible, and the proper way possible, in order not to harm Mother Nature.

Permaculture really brought this intelligence, it was so smart, it’s so logical, it really struck me. I was like, “Oh, wow, this thing is so smart. How come nobody does it on a daily basis?” Because in France at that time, there had been no bridge between permaculture and the farming world, farmers would rather go to lots of mechanics, lots of technology, huge surfaces, and so on. Permaculture was limited to some communities here and not hippie, but I mean self-sustainable communities. But there was no dialogue between all those they were not communicating at all, which is stupid. So somehow, by chance, actually, we were the first one to make this merge between permaculture smartness and farming practices.

Because we wanted to create a real ecosystem in the farm, there was no way we could harm the soil or the environment, and we had to go for a very diverse ecosystem in order to be able to produce. That was really a bomb, if I may say, in the farming environment, when we finally released our first study saying that it was possible to do what we were doing and make a living out of it. Because until that day, everybody saw that the environment and environmental protection and farming were completely opposite. You know, we're harming each other, which somehow was true the way it was done. So it was really a revelation to us. 

Despite the fact that it's been difficult farming, everybody knows that is difficult. It's really a question of passion. I mean, you get involved as much as you can, you put all your heart or your life into it, because it's such an amazing job. I love it so much. I found out about farming, really when we started the farm, but there's no way I would do something else with my life. It's just amazing.

Morag:

I think something that's really extraordinary that you've shown to the world is how productive a micro farm can be. When you really farm it well and apply those ecological principles, those permaculture principles, how much more food you can produce sustainably and economically from a small farm. You've created evidence for that, there's been research of the work that you've done, which shows to the world that it is possible. This idea that you can feed people and heal the planet simultaneously. What were the kinds of studies that were done and what did they show? If people were to follow this, would you see evidence showing that we could feed the people on this planet using this method of farming?

Perrine:

Well, first of all, it's stupid to say that it can’t feed the world because most of the world's farmers are small scale farmers. Most of the time, they still know how to observe the soil, or how to create or recreate an ecosystem in their environment. But unfortunately, they somehow lack knowledge, technical knowledge, or scientific knowledge. Sometimes they lack a little funding just to replant or regrow something that would help them go to the next step. First of all, I want to emphasise the fact that we were not the first ones to say that and to show it. But maybe we were the first ones to show it, thanks to those modern ways of communication, thanks to the internet and so on. But most of our research was based on what we call neo-peasantry, so market vegetable growers from Paris in the 19th century.

They were using piles and piles of manure, of course, because at the time, there were horses everywhere in Paris. So they had this resource, a very important resource, but still, technically speaking, they would associate crops in a way we can hardly mimic today, because it was so good, so technical - entire families were working all together, so there were no labour taxes, and so on. It was a completely different context, of course, in terms of being able to feed the people. At that time, Paris was self-sufficient with all those very small farmers all around Paris. We've got a few books left from those people, they had plots of land that were from 400 square metres, which is really tiny, but they were doing everything by hand.

So really, we were not the first one. We went back to whatever knowledge they've left, and we found a few. Technically speaking, thanks to them and the crop associations, I would say we've seen all our performances and all the yield predictions really increase crazily! The study was based on whatever they were doing in the old times. Even though the farm is 20 hectares wide for the study with us, we isolated a plot of 1000 square metres, which is an average of what neo-peasants would have done in the old times. On those 1000 square metres for five years, it was really a suffering, I have to say. For five years, we had to write down every single thing we were doing. If you were weeding, if you were watering, if you were harvesting, how long would it take, how much would we have, how much would we read etcetera.

Based on that, some very smart people from the French National School for Farming, they found out that on 1000 square metres, we could make quite a decent revenue from neo-peasantry or farming. Usually in France when you want to grow vegetables after your training, people tend to say that to be able to make a living you should at least get a one hectare farm. Otherwise you're not going to make it. We were saying that on less than what is usually recommended, we could make a living. Of course, all the conditions were different because 1000 square metres, you cannot grow everything. You’re not going to grow potatoes and onions. But who cares, I mean, the neighbour could do it. You could preserve the 1000 hectares for small herbs, tomatoes, high value vegetables, and so on. It is possible to feed the people with that.

So this 1000 plot was completely dedicated to the study, but we've been growing crops, according to the years, from the beginning up until the end, we were growing from seven square metres. At first, when we didn't know about permaculture, every single time we were doing something, we thought we had to get bigger, bigger, bigger to produce more. When we found out about permaculture after years, we reduced the first two phases because we found that we could be far more intensive on small spaces, and far more efficient than if you were growing wider. Because if you grow, at some point, you're completely overwhelmed by the weeds by the work, it's lots of energy, we do everything by hand.

So we found that in the end, starting from 2500 square metres were far enough to see the rest of it put back to nature, animals and trees so that you can diversify, you have more crops, you have more revenue, more diversified food. Also, if you want to be self-sufficient, you have water under the forms of ponds or water collection whatsoever, because water is so important nowadays everywhere on the planet. So it really is a good way to redesign your farm, to really transform it into an ecosystem. When you go into a forest, the ecosystem is quite wide, but not everything produces. In reality, all the interconnections between the plants and the trees are necessary to the balance of the system. But not everything is immediately producing a yield or revenue.

It's exactly the same for the farm, if you reproduce an ecosystem in the farm, some people are tempted to say, “well, what's the point in planting trees that won't give you a crop?” “Because maybe they're going to flower?” And that's it? Yes. But flowers will attract bees, who pollinate your tomatoes you're going to produce more and so on. It's so smart. It's so easy. Permaculture is really striking because it's common sense. I was always like, “why haven't we thought about this before?”

Morag:

When you started to diversify your farm, you noticed that more products use smaller space which is fantastic. That is the imperative of permaculture is to bring people's footprint on the land much smaller so we can leave more space for nature, essentially. What kind of nature did you find coming into your farm? Did you see species starting to come back into the landscape? Another question related to that, as you started to add more ponds, how did you notice that you were helping to rehydrate the landscape? Did you notice changes with what was going on in farms around you as opposed to what was happening to you in the fluctuations of seasons?

Perrine:

Well, we've noticed a lot of things and actually, we've led a study on birds. And you know, the scientists who did that? They set an observatory in the forest, in a pasture not too far from the farm and in a piece of land that hasn't been touched for years, basically. More birds were on the farm, and they explain it by the fact that all the small ecosystems that composed the big ecosystem are so diverse, that we managed to attract all types of birds, some that would niche in the trees, some that would lay eggs on the ground, etc. Because really, the farm itself is a mosaic of small ecosystems interacting with each other.

In some places, we have quite dense trees, almost like a forest. We've got a few forest gardens in some places, and where there's hardly a tree, because it's greenhouses. In other places, we've got a lot of water. So we've got a big pond with an island on which we grow vegetables. It's so diverse that all those birds are welcome. They're happy to be there.

So that's for the birds, but for the biodiversity by itself, we've seen snakes coming back, which is good! It's a good snake, a nice one that would eat the mice, but will not bite the human beings. So somehow we've recreated enough biodiversity so that the system can run by itself. It's not magical. It's not easy and magical, let's say that way. But it took something like three years to really see a balance coming in all those little ecosystems.

Morag:

Yeah, it's not long though, is it? Three years?

Perrine:

No! Because I thought in our type of climate, it would take years, but no, really, it was pretty fast. It was really obvious, you could see it, you didn't need an engineer to come and measure. You could see it on a daily basis and every single spring. That's the magic of understanding how an ecosystem works. Every single spring, you would see new interconnections arising between this tree and those plants at the feet of the tree, or see that the sheep found by themselves a plant that I was growing for another purpose, to get rid of their worms and they were happy to find it by themselves.

The more diversity you have, the more balance you find. You may find it very uncomfortable at the beginning. I mean, you're supposed to make a living out of what's going on in your organisation. So you're like, “oh, I don't want to lose anything.” In our economical field, we're not very rich, if I may say so.

Morag:

In terms of making money from the farm, did you find that you're able to make enough money from the produce that you were growing? Or was it also other things that you're doing like farm consulting, farm education programmes or accommodation? Did you have a multiplicity of things?

Perrine:

Yeah, we finally developed a multiplicity of activities. But at first, the farm was just a farm. So all our living was related to the farming process. There was no way we could compensate with anything else. So we started the farm in 2003. And then as early as 2007, some people came to us and said, “Wow, what you're doing seems interesting, how do you do it? Could you teach me?” And we started some training, but very, very small groups, and not so often over the year because we had to keep on farming at the same time. It was not easy. But then step by step, we developed the training sessions. In terms of economy, it makes far better income than fruits and vegetables.

Still, the farm was supposed to pay for all its expenses, all its salaries, because you know, in France, you cannot mix farming products with more business related products. It's highly regulated, that you cannot mix. So that way, somehow we've managed to prove that it was doable only based on the farming activities. Again, in France, you can not shelter the consulting or the training on the farming activity. It's good somehow, it's a way to protect this type of activity because the tax regime is not the same and paperwork is always a pain in France, but for that purpose, it was good to be able to show people that the farm was capable of making its own money, basically.

Morag:

I think it's quite remarkable that you chose to do this, you know, with as little fossil fuels as possible with no tractors. You have a beautiful horse I noticed in some of the pictures there! This idyllic notion of working with a horse on a farm, were you the horse person? Was that one of your jobs?

Perrine:

No, no, that was Charles but I love animals and I have a special relationship with them. It was easier to work with the horse than with a tractor, really, the mechanics are really a pain for both of us. So I know that not everybody would go for that. But for us, it was easy. So it made things simpler. But still, I'm not opposed to using a tractor or using any type of motorisation as long as it is reasonable. It makes sense and it makes your life easier. I haven't got a problem even with technology, widely speaking, as long as it is smart. According to permaculture principles, it makes you somehow save some energy - human energy or other types of energy. But somehow, with something more sophisticated, you don’t always save energy. It's just like a dishwasher, for instance.

Morag:

So if you talk about ecoculture, can you tell me a little bit about where that came from? How do you describe it differently from permaculture?

Perrine:

Yeah. So permaculture to us is a toolbox that enables us to design a frame, and the frame is an ecosystem. The frame is therefore our farm. In this frame, we're going to use different techniques, farming techniques that we've called ecoculture. Some people also know the word agroecology, we can also use agroforestry. For example, agroforestry consists in planting trees in the middle of crops or crops in the middle of trees. But it's just one technique. Ecoculture consists in making sure that all those farming techniques will somehow mimic the way nature works. So permaculture is wider, and most of the time, people get it wrong, especially here in France, and I always have to explain what permaculture is. It's such common sense and so simple that it takes a long time to explain it,

because people don't find it interesting.

So permaculture really is giving you a guideline that can take you by the hand and show you how to draw the space, how to design the farm. Ecoculture, like agro ecology, is a sum of techniques that you're going to be able to use, like working with a horse, and raised beds. It's a way of applying agriculture in your permaculture design.

Morag:

Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense. I'm glad you said that because that really helps to give that perspective that there are lots of different strategies and process approaches that you can take that fit within that broad scale design thinking. I see it as a lens, or as a paradigm even.

Perrine:

And there's no copy and paste. I mean, there's no ideal farm. This farm, the bigger one is not ideal, it’s what we've done with it based on this intelligence of the permaculture brought to the system, this frame. Within the frame, you're totally free to do whatever you want. You have to choose the farming techniques that suit you. Somebody who cannot work with the horse because they're afraid people are afraid of horses - just don't do it. Use a tractor. That's not a problem for me. As long as globally speaking, you still have your ideas and your views, what my ecosystem should be like, what can I do to save as much energy as possible? How can I manage to feed the people while protecting the planet? It really is okay.

Morag:

Yeah, yeah. So what do you see now as being the current situation with permaculture in France, do you see that it's actually rippling out? Is it myceilating further? Is it becoming more well known across the board side of community gardens, for example?

Perrine:

Yes, definitively what we've done has helped permaculture become better known, if not just known, because no one knew much about it before. Even when we started, we knew nothing about it and we found out about climate change just by chance, you know. So, definitely, a lot of people know about permaculture or they think they know what it is. And what makes me happy is that there's really a connection between farming and permaculture.

I shall say, not the mainstream farming, but all the young farmers who go for proper training, because since we had no training, we want everybody to and we say, “Don't make the same mistakes as we do.” We had no frame, we had no reference. That would be the real truth to us. So we had a chance to go and find everywhere we could. It was tough, because we had to try and fail so many times. But still, it gave us the freedom to go and search. But nowadays, my first advice to people who want to embrace farming is to go for training.

Morag:

Is that permaculture training? You're saying go and do permaculture?

Perrine:

They need proper training, both farming training and permaculture training. When they go to farming training, the government says that 80% of the people who go for the regular farming training, while wanting to be a vegetable market grower, say they want to use permaculture principles. So you know, it's been competent.

Morag:

Is permaculture being trained in the conventional farm training systems? Do they talk about permaculture there?

Perrine:

They talk about it, but actually they came to us something like six years ago, because they wanted to implement some permaculture courses in the regular training. They did so but it's still optional. So you know, not everybody can choose it and it's not taught in all the farming schools, but still, it does exist. Most of the time, the people in the regular training go for internships in some farms here and there, that way they can discover and see how to both create and manage such types of farms.

Morag:

How easy is it for young people to enter into farming in France? I know here in Australia, just access to land is one of the biggest issues, the price of farmland everywhere is just going through the roof, particularly ones that have access to water and that are close to urban areas.

Perrine:

I guess access to land is a problem worldwide, unfortunately. The cost of the land and accessibility is an issue. So it's still not easy. But at the same time, by 2030, in France, almost half of the farmers will retire. So we're going to lose half of the farming population in the seven coming years. By definition, some farms will be available. But the problem is that this availability shall be monitored quite closely. Because most of the time what happens is that the big investors, I wouldn't say big farmers because they're not farmers anymore, people first in farming land will be doing it as pure business. They tend to buy those lands and get bigger and bigger and bigger for no reason because those people that are farmers, they don't know their land anymore.

Morag:

Do you know the stats of how many people who are living on the farm are still farming in France as opposed to the company owned corporate farms? Do you have any figures on what that is?

Perrine:

It's far more traditional than it is in Australia here. First of all, the territory is not so wide and we still have some small villages here and there. So it makes it okay for somebody to remain at the farm and the classical model of the farmer living on the farm - I'm still there. Despite the fact that the big investors would take over and buy the land, there are still farmers living in the farms. They just don't own the farm, they just farm as an employee. So it's really the mainstream model. I don't know about the figures but I would say it's 80% of the cases. But again, everything is different. I mean, the way that the land is organised, the way that the city and the places where the people live, everything is completely different. I don't think we could compare.

Morag:

No, no, it's quite a different layout. You were talking before we started recording about the impact that the COVID pandemic had on farming in France, and also the war in Ukraine. And I wonder whether you could just comment about that. And also what are some of your ideas about how to support young people to get back into what to get onto the land?

Perrine:

Yeah. So the problem we're facing now, actually we’re facing many problems. But the thing is that during COVID, during lockdown, a lot of people were scared. We had to sign a document to be able to get out of the house and go for some groceries and stuff. So a lot of people came to the farms. Globally speaking, all farms. Especially farms that were growing vegetables, but they would also look for meat, cheese. People felt like they were in a war situation somehow. It was very, somehow funny and interesting to see how scared they were coming to us. How anxious.

So during the lockdown, which was in France, from March 2020 to the middle of May 2020. Lots of new customers came. So all the farmers were like, yes! People finally understood that coming to the farms to buy groceries, they don't go to the supermarkets anymore! They wanted fresh food and they had time because it was locked down. They had time to cook and do fresh things and so on. We started to sow a lot, because we were like, “well, in summer, we're gonna need a lot of tomatoes.” But when the lockdown ended, everybody was gone. Almost everybody was going, even the customers that were there before.

I think psychologically speaking, remember, people didn't know yet what it would be like with COVID. Maybe they would be able to go on holiday in July and August. But then that would be over after we wouldn't go on holiday anymore. I don't know, there was a fear that you could feel. It seemed far more important for people to go on holiday, to pay for the Netflix fees and or to buy the latest iPhone model. Somehow I don't know why but they felt like food was not an important family budget anymore.

Step by step, all the organic farmers, not only vegetables, growers, but all types of producers, we've seen our revenue go down and down and down. On top of it, we had the consequences of lockdown, which everybody knows. It was not something specific to France, but all the things you wanted to buy were all the primary matters prices were going up. So for the users, young farmers were creating their farms before COVID. I don't know, maybe a greenhouse in France was 40,000 euro, but after COVID It was 67,000 Euro you don't know why it raised so much but all the prices went up!

Then we had the war in Ukraine with the rise of the energy prices and there was a mix of many circumstances and reasons that made the organic market go down and down and down. The fact is that all those young farmers who studied them had small scale farms, like we've been doing and we've been talking about for years. It was very difficult for them and it's still extremely difficult for them. Not because they cannot produce because they know how to produce. Thanks to the book, I mean, we've left so much information about what we've done. So the technique is not a problem, the technique is there, it's efficient. Mimicking the ecosystem is something very smart, and it works.

But the problem was how to sell them and at what price they should sell them, they couldn't sell anymore, because the people were not interested, they were interested in very low price products. So there is a trend now, and it's still on and it's really a problem. So I've stopped working at the farm, something like one year and a half ago. Since then, I've been having a look at so many farms here and trying to help those young farmers to set up the business and so on. I came to the conclusion that unfortunately, it is almost impossible in those circumstances and conditions to set up your own farm by yourself, actually.

My idea is to buy a farm, so I need to find the money. I need some investors to believe in what I'm going to say and do. I want to buy a farm here in western France, the average farm is 120 hectares and show you can do it differently from one man and a tractor. Because most of them it's a man, unfortunately, and I think things would change if we had more women in farming. So instead of one man and the tractor, and I would like seven or eight farmers, that would fulfil all the needs of a human being - one would produce vegetables, the other one eggs, the other one chicken, the other one cheese, the other one fruits, the other one herbs, the other one honey, the other one a farmer who grows their own wheat, make the flour and bake the bread.

With that, we could even have a supermarket. I don't like the word but a supermarket on a farm. People from the next town or village would come and do their groceries at the farm and that is good for the consumers. But it's also good for the farmers because if you are eight instead of one, you can have weekends, you can go on holiday, every time you need a hand to weigh something very heavy or to move something or to do whatever. It's always easier when you're two instead of one. So you could give a hand to your neighbour somehow and also you would materialise a lot of expenses. The internet, for example, for the internet connection, well it's far cheaper if you pay by eight than if you pay by yourself. Same thing for the accountant, same thing for the insurance and so on.

Morag:

Again, waste from one becomes the food for the other if you need to!

Perrine:

Exactly, that I was about to say that in terms of pure farming, then you would have far more connections between one producer to another. Let's say that the guy who makes the cheese, either it's from goat or cows, whatever, while the manure could go and feed the vegetables, the vegetable producer could give all the leftovers to the cows or the goats or even the chicken that would lay eggs and so on. We would make sure as much as possible that all the internal services would be rendered not only by the ecosystem, but also by the different production sites. So I want to start this, set it as a pilot project study, because there are a lot of issues, especially in French law, what would be the best legal status of the farm to be able to share all this.

I don't know how to say that in English, but to create a bank for working hours. You know, if I help you for one hour, then you will owe me another hour but I'm not going to pay for that - we will exchange it later. Or if this week, I work at the farm shop and we'll sell the products for everybody for an hour. I put it on the list and then I'm supposed to be given an hour of work from somebody else and so on. So it's a completely new type of organisation while new and not new at all because of the cooperative system we've known about for years and years.

All we need to do here is make sure that this cooperative system will be led by a business because in France, most of the time when it's cooperative, it's supposed to be highly democratic and everybody can say a word. At the end of the day, it's a complete mess. So we have to make sure that it is highly efficient in all ways. Governance is an issue for sure.

I need a lot of science to study this to help me with that. What we need to do is based on this pilot farm's set of frames and give it to all the other candidates who will want to create such a cooperative farm. To me, it is the only way we're going to attract young people from the cities to farming, because a lot of them are very interested in it in France, because they think the quality of life is far better than in the city. They think it's a less stressful job - well, they get it wrong, but that's okay! But it's a new way of life and they're really tempted with their family to come. At the same time, they know that it is so hard, it is so difficult to make a living on that. Most of the time they don't go for it.

Morag:

In terms of coming into something like this, if you buy the land, those who joined the cooperative, do they have any equity in the land? Or do you own it and they lease it? How do you imagine that side effects?

Perrine:

That’s a big question! In my opinion, they shall own their own share. Otherwise, they won't say, because we have the problem already in France, where we've got some organisation who buy farming land, and they rent it to a lot of citizens by this organisation rented to the farmer, the farmer tries and makes a living out of it. At the end of the day, especially when he retires, he's left with nothing. That is not appealing to those young people. So my opinion is that there should be some other people who don't agree with that. But in my opinion for it to work, it is really a way to go.

I would like to set up a financial system with an organisation or an NGO, there are many in France at the moment, who would buy the land based on, again, shared by the citizens. After something like seven years, everything is sold to the farmers, because I think while seven years is an issue, because here in terms of tax incentive, after seven years, you cannot have any tax incentive anymore on this. So while the citizen is happy with that, and he cannot expect more from the land, and after seven years, I think that the farmer can say for sure if he wants to remain a farmer or not, you know.

Morag:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Have you ever seen or tried or seen or any examples of farmland trusts where the land is held in trust by a community? I guess it's that kind of thing where the farmers then lease it, there's not as much connection with the land or deeper commitment to it or possible. So yeah, interesting. I was always thinking that that might be a way that young farmers would be able to find a foot in because to actually buy a piece of land you have to serve as a mortgage. I like this idea that you're talking about these different steps - you come in for seven years, and then it gets transferred, that makes a whole lot of sense. But what that legal structure is, first and then second, needs quite a bit of working out, doesn't it? I think we really need to reimagine what farming is and how we get in and how we get new people into farming.

Perrine:

We need to rethink farming technology, farming viability in terms of human beings. We know a little bit of all this, I don't think we are reinventing something completely new, because a lot of people have been doing so many smart things in the old times. But at this point, I think we have to recreate an ecosystem of all those good ideas and set something that will fit all the issues we are facing at the moment. And I'm 100% certain that this could work.

Morag:

Yeah. So this is what you're paying attention to now, this is what your passionate purpose is?

Perrine:

Yeah, now I mean I need to get the money! Because I don't think farming is a good field here in France, they are more into technology and so on. So you have to convince them that the future of our country and our food sovereignty is there. Because food sovereignty, people tend to ignore that, but it is really at a cost here.

If we tend to let all those funds go to bigger funds and investors, they don't grow food for daily consumption, they grow wheat. Here normally, the wheat goes from the harbour to the cattle somewhere else. This wheat is not dedicated to your daily bread. It's not true. Those people, they want to do business with certain kinds of productions, but certainly not the food that you're going to eat on a daily basis. We have to make sure that at some point, if worse comes to worse, if we've got another COVID outbreak, another war or something that refrains the energy coming to our country or any other country, that we can feed the people. In the old times, even if there was war, we could feed the people with really basic techniques. So if everything explodes tomorrow, we are not capable of growing food, basically.

Morag:

Looking from Australia, I look at France in the food culture there and think there must be so much more support for local food production, because you have so much more of a food culture as opposed to Australia. Where is that? Do you feel that there's awareness of the food culture and how that relates to supporting local farms? Or are you seeing the divide happening there?

Perrine:

Now, the onus is there, because, as you mentioned, we really love our food. But the thing is in France, the average revenue is pretty low. People at the moment are very anxious when it comes to the economy and revenue. Even though the economical situation is not so bad, despite whatever a lot of people might say, but it's very scarce. A family budget will be from 16% to 20% on food, which is a lot. But at the same time, families with low revenue will still spend 16% of the budget on food, but very low price and low quality food. So food is still something important in France. But again, in 2023, we are not protected from a lack of production, not because we don't know how to produce, but the way the food is sold and distributed is so crazy it doesn't make sense at all.

Morag:

No, no, it doesn't at all. So if young farmers in France are listening to this and they'd like to get in touch with you to talk more about future young farmers to talk more about the future of young farmers, LinkedIn is probably the best way?

Perrine:

Yeah, I do spend a lot of time trying to give some advice, or at least exchange a few words with the people because I feel like it's our duty somehow to try and help everybody in that field. My dream is to have the country covered with small scale farms or cooperative farms, just like in the old times and get rid of those stupid supermarkets. It's not the supermarkets that are stupid, it's the way the people put products that doesn't make sense.

Morag:

I love that vision. I can imagine once you actually start and show how it's possible, that there's another world possible. I think that's been showing through your farming experience all the way along that there is another way that really does work.

Perrine:

It does work and we know it because people have done it in the past. We are somehow reimagining but not so much reinventing, with a little innovation. You can change things drastically.

Morag:

Yeah and also getting the documentation and the research. As you said it was quite a task to do that. But the effort that you put into doing that, you now have that evidence that you can go to government or you go to different organisations and actually help create political change in that way. I love that about what you're doing as well that you are working on multiple scales simultaneously to create that cultural and political shift that's needed to change the food system.

Perrine:

Actually a lot of young farmers today do the same, they tend to do from day one to not maybe not advertise but actually document and they write everything we can, everything they observe, they put it on paper. Which is good because when we need knowledge from the field, and once we have all this we can be stronger against the industrialised farming field.

Morag:

Well, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. It’s been an absolute delight meeting and talking with you and I can't wait to get a copy of the book in my hands. Like I said, I've had a look through just the first copy.

Perrine:

So am I!

Morag:

Alright, well thank you so much, Perrine. It's been really such a delight to chat and hopefully one day I might be able to come and visit you over there!

Perrine:

Oh yeah, please, please come.

Morag:

Alright, well take care. Thank you so much!

Perrine:

Merci beaucoup!