Cette semaine, passage obligé pour tous les candidats: le Salon de l'Agriculture. Reportage photos, au fil des jours et des travées.
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ON THE FARM WITH THE (POLITICAL) ANIMALS
With 50 days to go before the first round of voting in the French presidential elections, campaigning took place this week at the Porte de Versailles in Paris : the 49th International Agricultural Exposition. It is France's largest annual exposition with an estimated 700,000 visitors this year, 1000 participants and 4700 animals.
A tradition largely established by former President Jacques Chirac, a walk through France's "biggest farm" has become obligatory for any presidential candidate. Each year President Chirac would inaugurate the agricultural show with a marathon visit ranging between five to eight hours, visibly enjoying himself in this annual fete of rurality, shaking hands, patting the back-sides of as many different types of cattle as their are cheeses in France, and indulging in regional gastronomic specialties. A hard act to follow, even for a politician.
Clearly not the rural type, President Sarkozy in previous years would inaugurate the expo in an official two hour walk through. This being an election year however, the President/candidate has set a new personal record of four hours amongst the farmers, beasts, and visitors. His principal adversary, François Hollande, no less an urbanite than Mr. Sarkozy, announced that he would surpass even Mr. Chirac's record by spending ten hours on site. From washing down a cow in the morning to the last departing hand shakes, the Socialist candidate clocked out twelve hours later! Perhaps Mr. Hollande was inspired by his predecessor (Mr. Hollande's congressional district, the Corrèze, was previously held by Jacques Chirac) or more probably, he hoped to put a dent in the estimated 40% of votes intended for Mr. Sarkozy from the agricultural sector.
A recent poll by the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) places Mr. Hollande fourth with only 14% of intended votes from this traditionally conservative electorate, after 40% for Mr. Sarkozy, 17% for the National Front (extreme right) candidate Marine Le Pen, and 16% for Francois Bayrou (MoDem).
During his visit to the big farm, the center-right candidate, François Bayrou who is having difficulty existing in the electoral contest, knocked his main competitors Sarkozy and Hollande, "they come here once a year to pat the backside of a cow." He reminded everybody that he was the only candidate who actually had farmer's roots; (his father was a small farmer). "Farming is a practice and a culture that I know from the inside...farmers are men and women and should not be looked upon as voting ballots," he said, as he proceeded through the crowded aisles shaking hands and posing for pictures.
Marine Le Pen, the far right candidate, whom amongst farmers rates as the second most popular candidate after Mr. Sarkozy, is positioning herself as the champion of rural France. As she made her way through the throng of journalists covering her visit, she was cheered by the surrounding crowd of enthusiastic on-lookers.
In spite of the fact that France is the top European agricultural power with an annual production of 65.8 billion euros. There is a malaise amongst farmers. According to the sociologist, François Purseigle, specializing in the study of this socio-professional group there is a tremendous sense of isolation and precariousness amongst farmers today. In the last ten years France has lost 26% of its farms, there are fewer than one million active farmers today. Farmers are fearful of social declassification. Recent figures show an alarming level of suicides (32 for 100,000; there were 400 suicides last year!) the highest level of any socio-professional group. Mr. Purseigle says that not only has the National Front ideology significantly penetrated the farming population today but they are increasingly hostile towords environmentalist policies that they consider to be constraints. He says that there is an increasing sense of us (the rurals) against them (the urbanites).
The French are fond of their farmers, even when they burn tires and hay bales at freeway toll booths or "dismantle" McDonalds restaurants. In fact, until very recently, most French had relatives from a rural milieu. The French "peasant" is a living link between the large majority of city dwellers and the land, "le terroir", with its traditions, diverse cultures and regional gastronomies; they represent an idea of how France used to be before the late rural exodus. In his study on the identity of France, the historian, Fernand Braudel, wrote that France was rural and farm based (paysanne) during a thousand years, yet by mid-twentieth century, ignoring that this was no longer the case, France will continue to cultivate its attachment to rurality and the French farmer for a long time yet to come.