While the French cattle herd is decreasing from year to year and more and more breeders are giving up, this is an unexpected reversal on the part of the Court of Auditors. In its latest report published on Monday on public support for cattle breeders between 2015 and 2022, the institution makes two shocking recommendations, which should undoubtedly provoke the anger of professionals.
The Elders of rue Cambon, who judge that the production model of cattle breeding remains “fragile” despite “very high” public support, and highlight “unfavorable climate assessment”, do not go there by four paths . They call for “defining and making public a strategy for reducing the cattle herd”, even though the public authorities and the sectors have been fighting for years to maintain this breeding and against the ongoing decapitalization of the herd. A trend still observed between 2020 and 2021 (-2.1% dairy cows and -1.4% suckler cows), and which has accelerated further in recent months.
“Compliance with France’s commitments to reduce methane emissions (subscribed to the international Global Methane Pledge agreement) necessarily calls for a significant reduction in livestock”, indeed notes the Court of Auditors – without giving a precise figure – , which points out that cattle farming is “responsible in France for 11.8% of CO2 equivalent emissions, comparable to those of residential buildings in the country”, mainly because of the methane produced during the digestion of animals.
According to its report, this reduction would in no way jeopardize France’s food sovereignty objectives. “This reduction can be easily reconciled with the nutritional needs of the French, a third of them consuming more than the ceiling of 500 g per week of red meat recommended by the national health nutrition plan”, he points out.
On the other hand, the Court of Auditors suggests reviewing the support systems for breeders. “The logic for allocating aid should evolve by crossing the axes of economic performance and socio-environmental performance. (…) It is a question of tending towards a model of exploitations at the same time economically efficient and producing positive externalities for the environment or the economy of the rural territories, claims the institution. For breeders “most in difficulty”, she recommends supporting them “in a necessary retraining”, either “towards other production systems”, or outright helping them to “change professional orientation”. What undoubtedly make the main interested parties cough.
Judging the current support mechanisms for retraining “insufficient”, the Court of Auditors thus recommends broadening the base of beneficiaries and increasing retraining credits. Another idea mentioned in the 137-page report, the Court of Auditors considers that “the production of energy (of biogas by methanization, of electricity within the framework of agrivoltaism) can constitute an opportunity to be seized by French breeders” , “as much to diversify incomes and to contribute to the energy transition”.