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  • From: "Kevin Ancell" <kancell AT goodearthgardens.com>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Cc: "Pierre Kerbage" <pkerbage AT telco-data.com>
  • Subject: Family farm yields little but suffering
  • Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 08:17:23 -0700


Family farm yields little but suffering
By Michael Mills
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

SAVIGNAC-DE-MIREMONT, France - Jean-Louis is a carpenter, perhaps more
a "menuisier" - which is nearer the English "cabinetmaker." But I've never
known him to make a cabinet. Doors and windows are his specialty.

When we met, I was immediately taken by his twinkling eyes and ironic
informality. We get on well, and he has made us several doors and windows
from local chestnut wood. They fit snugly into the openings I made in the
yard-thick stone walls of the old farmhouse we bought a little more than 20
years ago.

Jean-Louis has a strong sense of community. Twenty years ago, he was a
local councilor in the next village (it still has a primary school and a
tiny shop, which is more than ours does). He was groomed to succeed the
former mayor of long standing, a cultured gentleman of great courtesy and
gentle, kind humor. At last year's local elections, the transition was
seamless. Jean-Louis has officially retired but will still put together a
quick window frame for a favored client.

It was from him that I learned of the death of Norbert.

Norbert was a young farmer struggling to make ends meet on the land
he inherited when his father died. Three years ago he married Agnes, the
eldest daughter from a neighboring farm, a family we know well. We met
Norbert a couple of times before he whisked Agnes off to his farm a couple
of miles away. He was a tall, lankily powerful young man with an intense
gleam to his close-set, near-black eyes. Less than a year later, we attended
the christening of Yannick, the bouncing baby boy Agnes bore him.

Like all smallholders in the region, Norbert knew he was in for a tough
life. In today's France, to qualify for the subsidies awarded to the farming
industry, you need an agricultural studies diploma. It's not enough to be
born into farming or to have no choice about trying to earn a living from
your land.

After poor school results, Norbert attended agricultural college for a
couple of years, time his father begrudged because it took him away from the
land. When the lad failed to obtain his diploma, his father refused to let
him spend more time trying again.

"I know how to farm," Norbert used to tell me. "I know what to plant
and when, and what fertilizers to use. But they made me sit through
accountancy classes and lectures in business management. I didn't understand
a thing. And as for the English lessons - what the hell was the
point?"

No qualification means no subsidy. And without it, a smallholder in
France today cannot keep home and family together.

So Norbert got a job doing the other thing he was good at: repairing
tractors. His salary meant he, Agnes and baby Yannick could live more
comfortably. But he spent every available moment - evenings, predawn hours,
all weekend every weekend - manning the farm, too, and was soon exhausted.
The bills kept piling up and he could not see a way out.

He did what many small farmers do, faced with debt, falling farm
produce prices, drought and increasingly weighty sanitary regulations: In
despair, he took to the bottle.

As my carpenter friend Jean-Louis tells it, it was a classic case. When
Norbert didn't show up at the farmhouse for supper, Agnes wasn't worried: He
was often on the land well into the night.

But by 10:30 she was alarmed. She telephoned around, including to
Jean-Louis. A neighbor had seen Norbert in some woodland adjoining his
fields. Jean-Louis quietly got a party together.

It was 1:30 in the morning when he found Norbert, as he expected:
hanging by the neck from a rope slung over a high oak-tree branch.

The small farmer in France brings in an average of 5,000 to 6,000 euros
a year - equal to roughly the same amount in U.S. dollars. Anything else he
earns takes him off the land. If his wife works, that, too, takes her off
the land, though it may be worth it. But with 1-year-old Yannick at home,
this wasn't an option for Agnes.

France's national suicide rate is nearly three per 1,000 persons age 16
years and older. Among farmers, it's nearly four times that. This doesn't
include elderly farmers, who, even if everyone knows they've killed
themselves, are invariably written off as dying of "natural causes" or
"senile accidents," easing insurance and inheritance claims.

Hanging and shooting are the preferred methods. Every farmer has a gun,
which he can, with little difficulty, point at his head, or a rope and a
stout beam or branch to sling it over.

France is only just waking up to the desperate plight of its
smallholders. A recent report describes the typical victim: "Aged about
forty, perhaps married (being married makes no difference statistically),
often plagued by debt, alcohol and relational difficulties. Isolation is a
serious problem. The men say nothing about their problems. They drink."

The subject has been a national taboo for too long. Public awareness is
just beginning to be aroused. But for Agnes and little Yannick, it's already
too late.

http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021110-15851704.htm





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