“Livestock must be recognized as a strategic asset of the nation” | EUROtoday

IThere isn’t any level in chasing chimeras or constructing castles in Spain with distant commerce agreements. The precedence ought to be to handle what occurs at residence, on our soil, in our fields, with our farmers.

France has, mainly, just one strategic useful resource: plant biomass ensuing from photosynthesis, born from the solar, the earth, water and soil vitamins. It is our inexperienced oil, on which our meals, our agricultural jobs and the vitality of our countryside instantly rely.

Sustainably producing this major biomass is barely doable if we attempt, on a nationwide scale, to manage and shut the biogeochemical cycles of the primary fundamental chemical components of life, specifically water, carbon, nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus. But we’re doing precisely the alternative: we import virtually all of our nitrogen, potash or phosphate fertilizers from Russia, China or Morocco, creating an absurd geopolitical dependence for a rustic that claims strategic autonomy.

This headlong rush is instantly linked to the gradual disappearance of livestock farming, an important hyperlink in closing the cycles. Where animals now not worth grass and fodder, the place manure and slurry now not return to the earth, the soil turns into impoverished and loses resilience. In many countrysides, deserted livestock buildings are multiplying, empty stalls have gotten concrete shells and farms are now not discovering patrons. These are silent tragedies: work instruments sacrificed, agricultural heritage offered off, know-how misplaced as a consequence of lack of acceptable coverage and ambition equal to the challenges.

A commerce stability deficit

The decline of dairy farming is especially worrying. Far from being only one manufacturing amongst others, this sector constructions the mixing of territories: it maintains grass, employment, social life and soil fertility. Conversely, methods targeted solely on the manufacturing of cereals, nonetheless environment friendly they could be, don’t carry the identical agronomic and financial worth to our territories.

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