Before they became farmers, Lore Apesteguy was working at an arts center in Strasbourg, France, giving tours of exhibitions, and her partner, Alexandre Chevalier, an engineering graduate, was unhappily employed at a large corporate company.
In 2019, they decided to make a radical change and left France to learn about permaculture farming for a year in northern Colombia. On their return, the pair contacted various farms to volunteer and continue their development, but they struggled to find jobs or apprenticeships.
That is, until one day, when they discovered an initiative in the southwest of France that is helping young people become the country’s next generation of farmers via low-risk, small-scale and closely-supported projects — and thereby helping create ultra-local networks of organic, seasonal and low-carbon produce for city-dwellers.
The so-called “Green Belt” project, which began in the French municipality of Pau, rents out modest, two-hectare plots of farmland near the city that are already prepared and equipped at an affordable rate for fledgling farmers.
“The Green Belt corresponded perfectly to our needs,” says Apesteguy, 30. She and Chevalier, 28, have run their farm in Rontignon on the outskirts of Pau since February 2022. “It’s very difficult to find farming land here. And even then we would have needed a bank loan, which we would have almost certainly been refused.”
Prospective farmers, who must submit detailed proposals for their farm projects, are connected with city markets and local restaurants for sales as well as a subscription service that allows deliveries of food crates to consumers. Through the process, technical advisers working for the Green Belt provide mentoring and technical support on the latest methods, such as robotic systems, new crop species and irrigation optimization.
During the summer agricultural peak in July, Apesteguy and Chevalier’s farm, known as Cultivate!, is a picture of fertility.
More than 40 different types of fruit and vegetables are grown on the site, a wedge of land in the shadow of the Pyrenees Mountains, including bok choy, fennel, leeks, turnips, beetroot, basil, sweet potato, cucumber and watermelon. By choice, all their work is done by hand, i.e. without the aid of machines, to maximize flavor and minimize emissions, and largely follows permaculture methods such as reusing garden waste as fertilizer.
“We like that it’s small scale,” says Apesteguy, her hands still muddy from potting seedlings.
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Sign up for the Reasons to be Cheerful newsletter.The pair were drawn to farming for environmental reasons — and for the benefits of working in nature every day. “It’s really cool that this is my office,” adds Apesteguy.
The Green Belt efforts began after authorities in Pau realized that their local food system could collapse amid a looming crisis of mass farmer retirements. In 2019, a survey carried out by the municipality revealed that as many as 70 percent of farmers in the region were due to retire or close their farms within the next decade.
“[After seeing the survey results] we agreed that we really had to work on the future, otherwise there could have been a serious problem,” says Patrick Buron, the city of Pau’s vice president in charge of agriculture and food.
But Buron knew that there was unlikely to be a new breed of young farmers with a system to support them — one that could help ease the high costs of setting up a farm, from acquiring land to investing in tools and agricultural materials.
Another obstacle that had deterred young people from entering the field was the reputation of farming as an all-encompassing job that required an unhealthy work-life balance.
And the city knew that in order to attract new young farmers, it would be necessary to ensure that there was sufficient demand for their produce.
So in early 2020, the Pays de Béarn, the French province that’s home to Pau, launched the Green Belt, with the idea of entrepreneurship for farmers, and start-up culture, at the heart of it.
“Being a farmer of fresh produce can be very tough work,” says Buron. “It can be a struggle to manage large farmlands. So we wanted to create human-sized farms that are manageable for just one or two workers.”
Each farm costs €200,000 ($220,000 US) to set up — half subsidized through Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy and the other half through a loan, which the farmers pay back over time through rent, making the project in theory self-sustaining.
Apesteguy and Chevalier, as with all other farmers involved in the project, signed an annual renewable contract, with the right to remain on the site for at least 18 years.
They pay a monthly contribution of a few hundred euros that progressively increases until the third year, at which point the rent is fixed for the rest of the period.
“It’s higher than the normal rent for farmland, but we receive lots of benefits,” says Apesteguy, pointing to the fact that each project receives advice from a local farmer as well as a technical expert employed by the Green Belt.
“We have less financial pressure, too,” she adds. If a project goes bankrupt, the farmers don’t have any liability. They must simply stop the project.
The model has proven a recipe for success, in some aspects. In the first four years of the project, the Green Belt has helped launch six organic farms in the region, including Apesteguy’s. These farms have provided 240 tons of vegetables per year as well as fruit, honey, cereals and meat and dairy products. No farmers have dropped out yet, suggesting there is scope for long-term change.
In recognition of that progress, Pau won the “Sustainable food systems: empowering people” category of the Eurocities Awards in June for its success in “shortening food supply chains and increasing the food and drink produced locally.”
For farmers like Apesteguy, the project — and, crucially, the wider support network it offers — has proven invaluable.
The farmers in the Green Belt have helped each other in the past if someone has had an accident or emergency, and they have regularly bought supplies en masse to cut costs.
“If we are all alone, it can quickly turn into a nightmare,” she says. “But this has allowed us to install ourselves properly.”
Off the back of this preliminary success in Pau, other Green Belt initiatives have been rolled out across France, with a total of 10 of the farming cooperatives now across the country, including in Paris, according to Cécile Bruere, director of the Green Belt.
“The challenge is to multiply an institution,” says Bruere. “But why not? The model could be replicated elsewhere. There is demand for it all over in France.”
Indeed, the Green Belt project’s experiences could prove useful far beyond the city of Pau, since the challenge of establishing a pathway for future generations of farmers is a global one.
A US House Agriculture Committee hearing in 2022 revealed that more than half of American farmers would reach retirement age in the following 10 years, but that the “steep price of entry to start a farm, along with rising input costs and volatile markets, make it tough for young and beginning farmers to take their places.”
A third of America’s 3.4 million farmers were over 65, according to the most recent agricultural census from the US Department of Agriculture, published in 2019.
“I think it’s a very serious issue, it’s international in scope,” says John Baker, a professor at Iowa State University who carried out a comparative study of how generations of farmers succeed each other in Iowa and Ireland. “You can see the same problem all around the world.”
Any programs that help people to access agriculture are “all very helpful,” adds Baker, but those that provide technical and business management support like the Green Belt does are particularly so. “You’ve got to put the feed down where the chickens can get it,” he says.
Yet even proponents admit that the transition will be far from simple, faced with climate change, urbanization and a lack of available farmland. Pau’s initial goal, for example, was to support 100 farms within seven years, but that number had to be significantly scaled back due to problems in securing farmland with water sources.
“They really need lands with access to water,” adds Bruere. “But there’s a lot of competition for land.”
As is the age-old nature of farming, Apesteguy has also faced her fair share of obstacles. During the first year, the region suffered a four-month heat wave. The second year, there were three months of rains. Snails have caused havoc, feasting on seeds. And recently, birds began to peck at their fruits, forcing her to erect netting on that part of the farm.
“Of course, it’s not an easy career,” she says, relaxing in the shade of a barn on the edge of her blossoming farm a mere 15-minute drive from the city center. “But this has given us a real opportunity, and that’s much more than we had before.”
