Cara goes to France Day 4 - From Fork to Farm

I started today meeting representatives from the Ministries of Agriculture and of European and Foreign Affairs. Aside from enjoying the great city views from their meeting rooms, it was also a good way to check my thoughts about what I’ve learned so far from my week in France. Both departments gave me more insight into specific details in the areas of climate and agricultural policy, which I’m hoping will develop into some kind of lessons Ireland can learn from the French experience. 

For lunch, I joined the Mayor of Paris’ 12th district, Mrs. Emmanuelle Pierre-Marie, at a local primary school. Mayor Pierre-Marie is a recently elected Green Party member bursting with passion and energy.

​I particularly enjoyed our lunchtime discussion about how she plans to transform her district over the next five years to make it more pedestrian friendly.  

Mayor Emmanuelle Pierre-Marie with Cara Augustenborg

Currently, cars and motorcycles represent just 12% of the transport in the area but take up 50% of the public space. Mayor Pierre-Marie has been engaging widely with residents to create far more pedestrian areas. In fact, most of the schools plan to pedestrianize the streets outside their front doors over the next few years to make them safer for children. 

Mayor Pierre-Marie is also responsible for logistics of all the schools in her district and serving healthy lunches is a big part of that responsibility. Over 9,000 students in the district are served hot lunches daily thanks to the efforts of approximately 150 canteen staff across the district. Over 70% of the food served is either organic, locally produced or certified as sustainable in some way, and the students are served a vegetarian meal at least one day a week. Once a year, all the students weigh their leftovers before disposing of them in a compost bin so that the school can track food waste and educate students more on the importance of reducing it. The schools also survey the students annually to improve the menu but always insist on serving a green vegetable as part of every meal. 

I enjoyed my school lunch of chicken noodle soup, mushy peas, ham and baguette with flan for dessert, all served on a stainless steal tray that weighs less than a plastic tray and doesn’t require the hassle and weight of extra plates. This means both kids and staff don’t have to lift as much and can clean up faster, in addition to reducing plastic use. I was thrilled at the end of my tour when Mayor Pierre-Marie sent me away with two of these beautiful trays to bring back to Ireland. I’m hoping someone in my life might love me enough someday to bring me breakfast in bed on them. They can also double as a bullet proof vest!

Joking aside, the trays and the school visit inspired me to revisit the issue of school dinners in Ireland. In 2015, Ireland’s Green Party developed a great policy proposal to bring hot school dinners to every school child in the country at a cost of EUR 350 million and create hundreds of local jobs in the process. Political pundits said it was a well-researched, rock-solid proposal but yet it has gone nowhere yet to my knowledge. At the school I visited in Paris, children get one hour to eat a hot organic lunch and another hour afterwards to play. My 11 year old gets 10 minutes to eat a packed lunch at her desk in silence. If the children talk during lunch, they don’t finish their food on time so they are discouraged from doing so. This has always bothered me as I feel it creates an unhealthy relationship with food to make kids eat quickly in silence, but I’ve always felt like a lonely voice and been dismissed repeatedly at parent-teacher meetings for raising this. 

During my visit to this Parisian school, I couldn’t help but feel my frustration bubbling once again as French students happily chatted amongst themselves over local, organic food and I thought about my kid back home and wondered “​why can’t we have nice things like this”? As the school’s Principal pointed out to me, if we want the next generation to make smart consumption choices, we have to start educating them and teaching healthy habits in school now. We have so far to go in Ireland in this respect and a growing childhood obesity crisis in the meantime.  

After that dose of inspiration from my school dinner, I headed from "fork to farm" 200km west of Paris to the Pays de la Loire region of France to visit a 150 hectare dairy farm that is part of France’s Low Carbon Farm Initiative. Part of me felt that this might be a bit of an oxymoron because cows can’t help but emit lots of carbon, but after several hours exploring every nook and cranny of Ghislain and Charlotte de Viron’s Low Carbon Farm, I’m convinced. 

Ghislain and Charlotte are originally from Belgium but moved to France in 2001 to avail of the lower prices for entering farming before dairy quotas were abolished. Both came from farming backgrounds. Ghislain told me he was first inspired to look at his farm’s carbon footprint 15 years ago when he saw an airline magazine claiming airplanes emitted less carbon than cows. He was offended by this because he always felt he did his best to ensure his farming practices were sensitive to environmental issues. Ghislain and Charlotte became part of France’s Low Carbon Dairy Farm initiative when it was launched as a pilot project of 4,000 farms in 2013, funded in part by the EU. The initiative has since become an industry led, voluntary programme of over 14,000 farms (approximately 25% of France’s dairy farms). Farmers involved in the initiative pay about EUR 800 for a sustainability audit from a trained Cniel representative and then take on various voluntary initiatives over time to reduce their environmental impact. This includes measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve water and air quality,  and enhance biodiversity. The audit uses a life cycle approach so the environmental impacts of imported products like feedstocks and fertilisers are also included in the assessment. Why can’t we have these nice things?

Ghislain took us on a tour of his whole farm, pointing out every detail of his practices, including the wide variety of feed his cows eat (spelt, sorghum, sileage, etc.); his fields of clover, rye grass, corn and other species; and his impressive rooftop solar array producing 290,000 kWh of electricity and grossing EUR 10-15,000/year! Why can’t we have these nice things?

Ghislain was honest about the challenges of low carbon farming – particularly the use of about 2% of soya as a feed stock for his cows. He’s doing his best to minimise use of this South American import while also giving the right nutrition to his herd to ensure their milk meets requirements to produce Emmental cheese. He’s hoping soya alternatives continue to develop so he can move away from it entirely. In the meantime, he produces most of the fodder on site (150 tonnes of cereals) to feed his 110 cows that he milks year round, producing 1,000,000 litres of milk annually. Through his current lower carbon farming practices, Ghislain believes he has reduced his carbon footprint by 20% already and has plans to go further. My heart sang when Ghislain pointed out to me that the lower lifetime of methane in the atmosphere (approximately 12 years compared to carbon dioxide’s lifetime of hundreds of years) presents a great opportunity to address climate change faster if we prioritize methane’s reduction. Why can’t we have these nice things (and nice attitudes!)?  

I was joined on my farm tour by two representatives of the dairy industry group, Cniel, who lead the Low Carbon Farm Initiative. They explained that the French dairy sector has already reduced emissions by 20% between 1990 and 2005 and aims to reduce by a further 20% between now and 2030. Why can’t we have these nice things?

​While just 25% of dairy farms are part of the Low Carbon Farm Initiative now, Cniel aims to increase this to 50% by 2025. They stress that all the actions they encourage farmers to take to become low carbon actually improve the profits of the farms in addition to lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Ghislain confirmed that his profits continue to increase as he applies low carbon practices due in large part to reduced input costs. All agreed that their main obstacles to getting other farmers to join the initiative were related to farmers already being too overworked to have the time to reflect and engage on the topic; the initial cost of getting an on farm assessment (approximately 800 euro); and the challenge of communicating the benefits of low carbon farming to farmers. These all seem like obstacles that are easily overcome and make me feel confident they will reach their targets within this decade. 

As night fell in the Sarthe, I said good bye to new farming friends feeling hopeful and grateful that there were farmers like Ghislain and Charlotte in the world who recognize their role as “climate solvers”.  

​The truth is, we can have all these nice things from school dinners to low(er) carbon farms, if we think they are important enough to keep asking for them. 

If I were a Green Party member, I’d ask my elected representatives to dust off their School Dinners policy and make it happen. If I were a farmer, I’d ask my farming association to get moving on a plan to help me reduce emissions by 30% over the next decade. I’m neither of those things, but I’ll keep asking anyway in the hopes that, if enough of us do, something might stick. 

Tomorrow, I finish my official tour of France in meetings with some outstanding leaders in climate policy. I've got butterflies in my stomach at the thought of them, but I’ll leave their names as “une belle surprise” until then.
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A demain, keep fighting the good fight!
-Cara