Since its creation in 1964, the Agricultural Show has been an unmissable event for the presidents of the Fifth Republic, which none, with the exception of François Mitterrand, has missed.

Arrived at 7:45 a.m. on Saturday February 25 to inaugurate the 2023 edition, Emmanuel Macron – president already a record holder for the time spent in the stuffed aisles of the Porte de Versailles exhibition center – again planned a long wandering of more than a dozen hours intended to take the pulse of rural France.

Start of a day at the Salon de l'Agriculture, with our fishermen!

pic.twitter.com/Q6zIns80MY

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) February 25, 2023

For politicians, and even more so for the incumbent Head of State, visiting the Agricultural Show is something of a ritual.

This meeting, now bringing together some 600,000 visitors each year, "says something about the way the country perceives itself", analyzes Saturday morning Benjamin Morel, political scientist invited from France Info.

"By going there, the head of state recognizes the importance of traditions and tries to subscribe to them."

But while the modes of communication are constantly evolving, in the age of live and social networks, these wandering sequences – increasingly long – must be worked on more than ever.

Because if it is a place of reunion, the Agricultural Show is also a "minefield", adds Benjamin Morel.

  • For Emmanuel Macron, XXL visits and disputes

In February 2018, Emmanuel Macron had broken the record of his predecessor (François Hollande, ten hours of visit in 2013) by staying more than twelve hours in "the largest farm in France".

An exercise he is repeating this year, after a 2022 edition parasitized by the very beginning of the war in Ukraine, which had forced him to make an express visit.

Accustomed to crowd baths, Emmanuel Macron lends himself to the game again and says he accepts "to [to] be yelled at, to [to] be pushed around".

In 2020, he was strongly challenged by a woman from the Yellow Vests movement on the issue of pensions, the citizens' initiative referendum (Ric) and police violence.

"Everyone must find their reason," he replied, deploring "people who have become extraordinarily aggressive".

President Emmanuel Macron at the opening of the Agricultural Show on February 25, 2023 in Paris.

Ludovic Marin, AFP

On Saturday, it was with an activist from the Last Renovation collective that he broke up.

The young man, who wore a T-shirt crossed out with the words "What are you for?", challenged the head of state, asking him to "listen to scientific reports" on climate change.

"You are the demonstration of a form of civic violence", retorted Emmanuel Macron, deploring that the activist refuses the "debate".

And to question him: "I am elected by the French people, you are elected by whom?"

🔴 An activist from @derniere_renov tries to approach Emmanuel Macron.

Security drives him away but the President returns.

#SIA2023



Climate talk: "It's our lives that are at stake" explains the activist.

pic.twitter.com/4zzt1pd5j6

— Clement Lanot (@ClementLanot) February 25, 2023

  • François Hollande, described as "manure" before the intervention of the CRS

In February 2016, a year before the end of his mandate, François Hollande was booed.

"Asshole", "manure", "good for nothing", throw breeders in its path, some turning their backs to show off their black t-shirts crossed out with "I am a breeder - I die".

The stand of the Ministry of Agriculture was immediately dismantled by demonstrators from the FNSEA, pushing the CRS to intervene to put them aside.

  • Nicolas Sarkozy and his "Break off, poor idiot!"

    of anthology

Nicolas Sarkozy has also had his share of turbulent meetings at Porte de Versailles, the most famous of which was in 2008. To a visitor who refuses to shake his hand and shouts "Touch me not, you're dirtying me", he replies "Break then you poor bastard!"

Two years later, during the round table organized in this same show, he came out in favor of farmers at the expense of ecologists, declaring that the environment, "it's starting to do well!"

Remarks that are controversial, helping to relativize the weight of environmental objectives in agricultural policy and suggesting, at the time, the suspension of the measures of the Grenelle de l'environnement which concerned agriculture.

Nicolas Sarkozy shakes hands with visitors to the Salon de l'Agriculture, February 23, 2008. The offer of a handshake, declined by a visitor, earned him an insult from the then president.

A skid still very vivid in the minds of the French.

© Eric Feferber, AFP

  • Jacques Chirac the beloved, or the one who knew how to "feel the ass of cows"

If there is one name that inevitably remains linked to the Agricultural Show, it is his.

In three decades of political life, including two years as Minister of Agriculture and twelve as Head of State, Jacques Chirac only missed one edition, in 1979, after a car accident.

In 2007, the last visit of the president who boasted of knowing how to "feel the ass of the cows" is a triumph.

Former French President Jacques Chirac after being offered Reblochon during a visit to the International Agricultural Show, March 5, 2010 in Paris.

© Jacques Demarthon, AFP

Bon vivant, endowed with a good fork and a pronounced taste for both beer and rum, it was at the Salon de l'Agriculture that Jacques Chirac "built part of his political identity", analyzes Benjamin Morel on France Info, recalling that this event was for the most popular president of the Fifth Republic the opportunity to build a solid image of a local man, close to rurality, which he did not necessarily have early in his political career.

  • François Mitterrand, the great absentee

In 14 years of mandate, the one nicknamed "Tonton" will not have really been that of the farmers.

Very concerned with agricultural issues, he nevertheless remained cold with the main union in the sector, the FNSEA.

Also, if he went to the Agricultural Show once as a presidential candidate in 1981, he never returned after his arrival at the Élysée.

"Leave that to Chirac," he said.

According to his former agricultural adviser, Henri Nallet, François Mitterrand indeed considered "that it was above all the role of the Minister of Agriculture to go there".

  • VGE, Pompidou and de Gaulle, sparingly

Prior to François Mitterrand, Charles de Gaulle, Georges Pompidou and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing had all visited exhibitors more or less regularly.

It was Charles de Gaulle who, in 1964, created the Agricultural Show to rename the General Agricultural Competition.

The show quickly became popular, but not enough to already constitute a symbol.

Charles de Gaulle himself rarely goes there.

The first of his visits took place in front of the cameras of the ORTF in 1964;

the last in 1968, the year before the end of his last term.

President Charles de Gaulle alongside Agriculture Minister Edgard Pisani during his visit to the Agricultural Show, March 9, 1965. © AFP

With AFP

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