In a farming system that demands more than it gives, Marie Halicki finds that relationships, not yields, nourish resilience, sovereignty, and sanity.

There’s plenty of time to think behind the wheel of a tractor. Once we’ve got the routine down and the tools more or less mastered, the hours spent in the middle of the bumpy fields, the dust and the seething heat, our brains start humming as loudly as our machines.

We think about work, how to improve animal welfare without ruining our wallets or our backs, how to better organize crop rotations, to use fewer inputs and less diesel. We think about how to do better. Not for others, as the media would have us believe, but for our animals first and foremost, and then for ourselves.

In the two years I’ve been farming, I haven’t met a single farmer who isn’t trying to improve something on a daily basis. And I love discussing all the issues that mutually concern us, because their thoughts come directly from the field, with their feet firmly on the ground, and not from theories honed in the confines of a mind that has never sniffed cow dung or managed a farm.

Ideas vs reality

Photo: Michel Halicki

I had a lot of ideas before settling down. Ideas to do without fertilizers or chemicals, right away, when I set up. Just like that, you take over a 215-hectare farm with 85 cows and 50 suckling ewes and convert everything, from one day to the next, without using any products.

Then you discover the real thing. You get to know everyone, all the cows, their calves, the land, the tools. Even if you’ve known them from afar for 15 years, it’s very different to watch someone do their job, then suddenly find yourself in charge. All the advice you were quick to give, at the edge of the field, seems to have a lot less substance when you find yourself making your first swath, trying not to pick up all the stones in the meadow and the soil that goes with them. Feeding the cows is the same thing. It’s not just a matter of “feeding hay with a handful of cereals”.

I’ve never calculated so much in my life since I started farming. How much does it cost to raise a calf, a cow, a lamb? At what age is it best to sell it, to get the best price? And then, how do we feed them, with what, in what order, so that it doesn’t cost us too much, while respecting the biology of our animals? I took courses in farm accounting and production costs to find out all this. And, above all, to find out how much we could earn by reducing our costs and increasing our products…

Because that’s what farming is all about, after all. And not just to feed others, France, the people, only to end up with less than one minimum wage a year for an average of 70 hours a week (if you were paid the French net hourly minimum wage, a farmer would have to earn €34,210 a year… we’re a long way from that). And this despite the CAP, despite direct sales, despite the endless hours spent improving the system, for the environment, for the animals, for…?

Sometimes we wonder why, sometimes we just want to tell all those who work 35 hours with weekends and vacations to get up and feed themselves on a daily basis instead of throwing in our faces remarks like: “€20 a kilo for meat, but that’s too expensive! Oh, it’s all right, you’ve got the CAP, and now you’re doing everything with a tractor”… A remark stings, it stings like hell!

Photo: Michel Halicki

Why buy French…

Because it’s like saying “I’d rather buy meat from someone who does the same job as you, but for less money, and in environmental conditions I don’t give a damn about, since it’s not happening at home”. Why buy French when you can order from New Zealand? On endless pastures with no wolves, but where deworming resistance is becoming so widespread that they can hardly find any molecules effective against worms in their animals… But who cares if the magnificent landscapes of that island are riddled with chemicals that kill the life of the soil? The finished product is cheaper and the problems aren’t here!

Why buy French when you can get cheap hamburgers and grilled meats from Brazil? From kilometers of paddocks and crops that have replaced primary forests lie tons of still living barbecue, fed on GMO corn and soya. But who cares if the workers there are paid with pennies and if the forest disappears, the finished product is cheaper and the problems aren’t with us!

We prefer to point the finger at our neighbouring farmer who is still applying fertilizer, even though we don’t realize that the doses are half those of the previous year, because she has started dynamic rotational grazing on her pastures. We prefer to point the finger at the tractor turning in the field to make hay and making noise at midday on Sundays, even if we don’t realize that this is the main feed for the cows and that no feed products are imported to the farm. We prefer to point the finger at CAP subsidies, at these “assisted” farmers, without realizing the hourly volume, the charges, the standards to be respected and the purchase prices which are at the daisy chain.

Pointing fingers is easy. Rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty is less obvious. That’s the choice I made, out of desire, out of passion, and because I wanted to change what was possible on my own scale. And you have to admit that it takes time, that you can’t master everything from one day to the next (some things are never mastered, like the weather and disease!), that a farming structure isn’t just a theoretical surface on which you can draw up plans with a ballpoint pen. It takes sweat, energy and a great deal of motivation (and money and diesel), every day, for ideas to take shape in the fields and meadows.

Feeding neighbours

So what’s a solution we can live with, as farmers? Here on the Roussière Farm, we have chosen to feed the people around us. For a little over seven years now, we’ve been taking our animals to the slaughterhouse ourselves, preparing our own meat boxes, and selling the meat we produce within 20 kilometers of our pastures.

This allows us to stabilize selling prices, make a better living, without any real additional cost for consumers (we are priced similarly to local supermarkets). And it brings meaning back to our work. We are not feeding “the French” (along with all the intermediaries that go with that), but families we know, people we can talk to and exchange with — neighbours.

And because we know them, we also want to be extra mindful about what we do, for their sake too. Next year, we’ll try to use even less fertilizer, and the year after that, we’ll consume less fossil fuel, plant hedges and one day we’ll try to pay ourselves a decent wage. Because every day we’re moving forward, and it’s worth it.

Teaser image credit: Author supplied.