REPORTING. 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, 2,300 euros: Gilles, cow breeder, wants to retire but cannot find a buyer
While one in two farmers will be of retirement age by 2030, succession is far from assured. A third of agricultural managers aged over 60 do not know what their farm will become in the next three years.
The thorny question of generational renewal is at the heart of agricultural orientation bill presented, Wednesday April 3, to the Council of Ministers. Franceinfo met Gilles Chatelain, president of the Savoie Rural Coordination, and milk producer in the PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) zone in Bassy, in Haute Savoie. 95 hectares of mixed farming, 60 dairy cows, 50 heifers and for the moment zero buyers.
In the middle of the stable, surrounded by his 60 Montbéliard cows, Gilles Chatelain retraces a century of passion. “The farm started with our grandfather in 1925, our parents took over, and my brother and I moved in in 1983”, he says. But today, Gilles is 63 years old, his brother has retired and his children have not caught the farming bug, so he has no one to take over the farm.
“I’m good at 12 hours a day, 7 days a week”testifies Gilles and “the remuneration, what is sad, is that it has not changed since the changeover to the euro, 2,300 euros net per month”. It would take at least two people to run the farm. Gilles Chatelain would like to sell his livestock and equipment, the value of which he sets at 350,000 euros, and rent his premises to buyers – both to reduce the cost of the installation and to supplement his retirement, which should reach 920 euros net per year. month. His farm is viable, producing 550,000 liters of milk per year, but for the moment, it is failing.
“I have several who have come but they have around fifteen farms that could suit them so they will visit them, study the accounts”says Gilles, who also wouldn’t want to sell to just anyone. “I wouldn’t want, three years later, to have no more animals, for the building to be empty like some colleagues”, confides Gilles. There is also no question of seeing its land used to supply the village’s methanizer.
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