Jérôme Caze, 37, married and father of three children, is completing his sixth year at the head of a market gardening and chicken farming operation in Lot-et-Garonne, the first spent without the aid dedicated to young farmers.
In a protean farming world, recurring crises and an unprecedented generational renewal – within 10 years, one in two farmers will have passed retirement age – are sowing more and more doubt about the future of the profession.
For a year, throughout the seasons, this “non-unionized” and “apolitical” farmer agreed to tell AFP about his daily life as a “small farmer”, between joys and sorrows, and the challenges to overcome – physical, financial, social, family, environmental – to “feed” the population. And be able to make a living from it.
During a first meeting, he spoke of the ambitions and the difficulties of the beginnings.
– L’installation –
“This farm was purely market gardening, with my parents who specialized in canned tomatoes. They had taken it over from my grandparents, the sons of sharecroppers, who did a bit of everything in the 1950s: cows , vines, a little vegetables, tobacco.
My parents are worried about the future of the profession, they did not want me to take over the farm. But for me it was the heritage: we are the eldest, with a feeling of responsibility, of continuity, and then we know our contribution to society. With my food, I bring something concrete.
I have a professional license + Renewable energies + but after several years helping my parents, when they had regular health problems, I passed my BP (professional certificate) as a farmer and I started at the end of 2017.
I wanted to leave my mark rather than following in mom and dad’s footsteps, even if they were doing well financially. I wanted to revolutionize. I borrowed 250,000 euros to build two Label Rouge chicken breeding buildings, pay for the earthworks, masonry, etc. But also for the stakes, the fences, which are horribly expensive, in order to plant an orchard so that the chickens can roam around in the shade.
You add 70,000 euros to buy land, my aunt’s, to rebuild the family farm from the beginning, plus 20,000 euros for equipment: front loader, straw blower, sweeper…
Lack of potency: the first building was almost finished when a storm flooded it. I had already ordered the chicks… I had to cut it in half to adapt it urgently. As if someone delivered you a new car and told you that you have to tamper with the engine to make it run…
The beginnings are always complicated. You’re alone in your shit, with only the help of a farmer friend, who also has his own schedule, to get you out of this kind of stuff. And my wife, on call, who supports me occasionally.
Looking back, fortunately we made the chickens. After Covid, only with vegetables, I would have broken down. I was able to pay myself a salary in the past but today, I am on RSA.
I should have borrowed more to build four buildings and twice as many chickens, I was advised to do so, but it’s a financial risk to take and I was weak.
For the past year, we have been breeding Duroc pigs, a breed that does not exist in the area and is extremely high quality. Even if we avoid organic because the label is too restrictive and restrictive, we follow the watchword inherited from my parents: always favor quality before calculations. We are proud of it. We do it with vegetables, without phytosanitary products and with integrated pest control (agroecological technique using insects, for example, to eliminate parasites, Editor’s note), with Label Rouge chickens, and now pigs.
I have already spent 5,000 euros for two breeding males and ten sows, we are tightening our belts: for the little ones’ nursery, we are going to do +tripote et mascagne+ (make do, Gascon expression, Editor’s note): the stakes come from the uprooted vines by my parents in 2007; The shelter was a trailer with 30-year-old sheet metal. We reuse everything. To the economy. You have to because when you get started, you invest as much as you sneeze.”
Comments collected by Karine ALBERTAZZI and Thomas SAINT-CRICQ
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