The Agridemain association and the Make.org Foundation endowment fund are launching open days from Friday to Sunday on a thousand agricultural sites across France.
The objective of this initiative is to make the French aware of the challenges of current agriculture, which is often not well known to the general public.
Visits to farms, vineyards, breweries, truffles, experimental farms ...: a thousand sites open their doors from Friday to Sunday at the initiative of an agricultural world anxious to "reconnect" with the great public. The ambition of these first "national days of agriculture": to take root in the French outings calendar in the same way as European heritage days. The organizers are the Agridemain association and the Make.org Foundation endowment fund, associated with the citizen consultation platform Make.org.
Agridemain brings together in particular the majority union FNSEA and affiliated associations, chambers of agriculture, Crédit Agricole, producers of phytosanitary products united in the UIPP and even those of seeds represented by Semae.
The "common goal is to recreate the link between citizens and the agricultural world," said Estelle Colas, director of major causes of Make.org, during a press conference Monday at the Ministry of Agriculture, which supports the 'surgery.
"The French like farmers but ignore agriculture"
These days will present all the "diversity of French agriculture", from urban farms to mountain agriculture, from conventional to organic, added Agridemain president Guillaume Lefort. The association thus seeks to "better explain to the general public what agriculture is today," said the farmer from Seine-et-Marne. "The French like farmers but do not understand agriculture", also estimated the director of Agridemain, Gilles Maréchal, for whom "the agricultural world has lived a little too withdrawn".
In addition to visits to farms and invitations to bring a picnic to a participating winemaker, it will also be possible to discover the experimental facilities of the Inrae research institute. Among these, a "circular orchard" in the Drôme, designed "so that pests get lost", described Philippe Mauguin, CEO of Inrae. The Système U distribution chain, the Rungis wholesale market and the industrialist Bonduelle are among the partners of these days.