Brussels (AFP)
FNSEA president Christiane Lambert was elected head of Europe's main farmers' organization, Copa on Friday, becoming the first woman to hold the post, Copa announced on Twitter on Friday.
"It is an honor and a responsibility to represent European farmers at a complicated time, but at a key moment for the future of agriculture," says the breeder in a video released by the European union.
"Farmers are faced with many uncertainties. Uncertainties about the very nature of their profession, uncertainties about the climate, uncertainties about the negotiations of the common agricultural policy, its budget, its transition period, uncertainties about the outcome of Brexit, uncertainties also on the implementation of European strategies, whether it is the + From the farm to the fork + strategy or the + Green Deal + ", she enumerates.
She stresses that she wants "to ensure that the work of farmers is better recognized in Brussels".
In her message, recorded beforehand on her pig farm in Maine-et-Loire and showing her in particular feeding her pigs, Ms. Lambert speaks in French, but also in English, without seeming completely at ease in the exercise.
The 59-year-old farmer - who runs a farm of 230 sows with her husband - will combine the presidency of Copa (Committee of professional agricultural organizations) with that of FNSEA, as before her Luc Guyau (1997-1999) and Jean-Michel Lemétayer (2007-2009).
"The combination of the two missions is the lot of all Copa presidents," said the side of the French union, at the head of which Christiane Lambert was renewed without surprise in early July, three years after her election following the death suddenly from his predecessor Xavier Beulin.
In a still largely male agricultural world, Ms. Lambert successively became the first president of the Young Farmers' Union (then the National Center of Young Farmers, 1994-1998), then of the majority union FNSEA since 2017, and now of the Copa, which brings together main European agricultural unions.
Responsible for carrying the voice of some 10.5 million farms in the European Union (according to the most recent data, still including Great Britain), it will have to synthesize the often divergent interests of high tech producers vegetables in the Netherlands, wine growers in southern Europe, French fry manufacturers in Belgium, Hungarian landowners and small mountain breeders.
© 2020 AFP