Highlights: With a record 700,000 visitors in 2014 – more than 600,000 last year – the international agricultural show is the busiest annual fair in France. The one we usually nickname “the largest farm in France” takes place between the end of February and the beginning of March. It has become over time a practically unmissable event for the media and political figures. Despite its symbolic importance and the political and economic issues it raises, the event has been virtually ignored by historians, writes Olivier Favier.

With a record 700,000 visitors in 2014 – more than 600,000 last year – the international agricultural show is the busiest annual fair in France. The one we are used to…

France

The agricultural show: a little-studied media and political ritual

With a record 700,000 visitors in 2014 – more than 600,000 last year – the international agricultural show is the busiest annual fair in France.

The one we usually nickname “the largest farm in France” takes place between the end of February and the beginning of March and has become over time a practically unmissable event for the media and political figures.

Jacques Chirac at the Salon de l'Agriculture in 1996 Sygma via Getty Images - Thierry Orban

By: Olivier Favier Follow

The international agricultural show, the first edition of which dates back to 1964, was born from the creation by

Edgard Pisani

, Minister of Agriculture, of a mixed economy company, CENECA, National Center for Agricultural Exhibitions and Competitions , which has continued to manage the event until today.

It then took over from the general agricultural competition, created in 1870, which became the

“Paris Agricultural Week”

in 1909 .

This story is also anchored in a long tradition of

“agricultural shows”

, whose political and social issues were immortalized by Gustave Flaubert in his novel

Madame Bovary
,

published in 1857. At the beginning of the 2000s, the show became a

“ chestnut tree”

– an event that the media cover every year without really renewing their approaches – a place to appear before each election and a barometer for politicians.

For politicians, a

ritual

of proximity

For the latter, we readily speak of

“marathons”

– with a record held by Emmanuel Macron in 2019 with more than 14 hours of presence in a single day.

Few are those who shun the event, like the former Trotskyist candidate of Lutte Ouvrière Arlette Laguiller, the anti-globalizationist José Bové in 2007 affirming that

"it's not by hitting the cows' ass that we defend agriculture”

or even Jean-Luc Mélenchon – whose last appearance on the scene dates back to 2014.

Despite its symbolic importance and the political and economic issues it raises, the event has been virtually ignored by historians.

Ivan Chupin, HDR lecturer and Pierre Mayance, contract teacher-researcher, are political scientists and among the very rare academics to pursue a long-term study – since 2017 – on the show and its political and media implications.

In six years, they saw the 2017 edition marked by the scandal surrounding the fictitious employment of François Fillon's wife - the visit of future president Emmanuel Macron then almost went unnoticed - and the passage of Eric Zemmour in 2022, which, not content with confusing the name of the muse cow with that of its breed, was accompanied by overheated activists convinced that they would have to do the punching with

“the antifas”

Editions disrupted or canceled by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine

If visits to the general public part of the show have a political meaning, the agricultural world does not appreciate it when affairs outside the sector or strictly ideological positions are displayed there in broad daylight.

To please, you must first know how to show an appetite for the rural world and a certain knowledge of the environment.

Jacques Chirac was a past master in this exercise, and it was in the living room that his love of apples began to amuse journalists, before becoming, thanks to a televised statement, a campaign argument.

The error of his successor Nicolas Sarkozy, grossly insulting an unwelcome person, and

the image of arrogance

that it largely contributed to creating, are enough to show that, if the peasant world is predominantly right-wing, no sympathy is gained. on a simple positioning.

In 2020, the salon closed early due to confinement.

The following year the edition was simply canceled.

That of 2022 – despite the electoral context, moreover without much relief since Emmanuel Macron seemed to have no opponent capable of beating him despite his declining popularity – was eclipsed by the sudden outbreak of the

conflict in Ukraine

, which immediately diverted media attention.

The president only made a brief visit there that year, delegating the mission to his Prime Minister Jean Castex and Minister Julien Denormandie.

“A

fiction that has effects”

In 2023, the number of visitors once again exceeded 600,000 and the 2024 edition opens with the

tense context

of the recent peasant protest.

The FNSEA, the majority union where, as Pierre Mayance recallsThe FNSEA, the majority union where, as Pierre Mayance recalls,

“strong dissensions reign, particularly between breeders and cereal growers”

has much more weight at the show than its rivals, the Confédération paysanne or Rural Coordination.

The paths of each person also vary according to political sympathies, even if the omnipresence of the media around personalities means that many do not even see those walking a few meters from them.

The geography of the place, which hardly changes from one year to the next, with its distribution into four well-compartmentalized halls, leaves little room for chance and the spontaneity of exchanges or questions.

But ultimately it doesn't matter.

“

There

is a kind of fiction,”

explains Pierre Mayance, “

which is shared by everyone.
We believe that

at the agricultural fair

, we will meet France.
And since it is shared by everyone, it is a fiction that has effects.”

In a country where farmers represent less than 2% of the workforce, attachment to the land dies hard.

And its influence goes well beyond the technical discussions, which are very important, which at the show take place mostly away from the cameras.

Our selection on the subject

To read:

Discreet meetings
(an article by Ivan Chupin and Pierre Mayance freely available on Cairn)
My life as a young French farmer
“A village”: in the eyes of Madeleine de Sinéty

To listen:

Can we achieve agricultural sovereignty?
Agriculture: 50 years of the life of a farm in France
In 2023, African agricultural research in the spotlight at the Paris Agricultural Show

The agricultural show: a little-studied media and political ritual

The agricultural show: a little-studied media and political ritual

For politicians, a

ritual

of proximity

Editions disrupted or canceled by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine

“A

fiction that has effects”

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The agricultural show: a little-studied media and political ritual

The agricultural show: a little-studied media and political ritual

For politicians, a ritual of proximity

Editions disrupted or canceled by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine

“A fiction that has effects”

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Trends 24h

Latest

For politicians, a

ritual

of proximity

“A

fiction that has effects”