Sunday, July 27, 2014
Le Monde has been carrying a series of articles under the header, Nouvelles Vies À La Campagne, focusing on individuals in different parts of France who have gone "back to the land", as we would say. Yesterday's article, Eloge de la frugalité --which many, including this author, would have translated as "Elegy to frugality" actually means "In Praise Of Frugality". (By the way, those of you reading who know that the first word in the title appears in the dictionary bearing an accent aigu over the first "e" will think I've forgotten it in transcribing the article's title. Not so: French rules of orthography for titles beginning with a capital "e" never carry one. How confusing is that?)
The article, a tale of grit and idealism, focuses on several farmers who began life as middle-class children in cities and became neoruraliens polyvalents, literally multi-tasking neo-ruralists. What that actually means is that these men and women make ends meet not by just farming, but by farming and engaging in other ways of making money. And they manage their farms in the arrière-pays --France's back-country, isolated, economically poor and hard-to-farm.
The photograph that graces the article is of Thomas Geidel, his partner in rural life, Malika, their two children and the family dog, set off against the mounds of hay they store to feed their lambs and kids. Thomas Geidel is 50, looks like Daniel Day-Lewis, and is German. At 22, while pursuing studies in economics at the university of Montpellier he became enamored of the wilds of northern l'Herault, and convinced he could set himself up as a farmer. To the great displeasure of his parents, both professionals-- he followed through on his intention, buying a ruined farm for about $12,000, as well as a donkey, a horse and four goats. He took a correspondence course on farm management and expanded his activities to meet his needs: he wrote articles for a regional German newspaper and published a book which sold well, followed by two books of poetry. He bought another farm --30 hectares of meadow, plus brush and tree-covered mountain. Bit by bit, he managed to establish himself as a breeder, although he continues to write --and act in a theatre in Marseilles a few months a year.
Malika is his second partner in rural adventures. She is a part-time elementary school teacher, but also studies dance and gives workshops in the area. The household, or ménage, makes its own bread, gets its vegetables from their potager (--vegetable garden) and uses wood from the trees on the farm's acreage to heat the house in the cold weather. Geidel is happy with his life, finding the farm chores not too onerous (he milks the lambs once a day) and the quality of life superior to what he might have expected had he pursued the career his parents wanted of him. His annual income is between 25,000 to 30,000 Euros, i.e., $30,000-$40,000. However, half of that amount comes, not from the farm or Geidel's other activities, but from government subsidies, which account, by his reckoning, for a little more than half of his yearly income.
"Without being lavish or formidable in principle, these subsidies allow family-based agriculture in the region to survive, and allows us to live with dignity, without becoming marginalized." The article also focuses on a Swiss woman of 66, retiring after thirty-eight years spent running a farm where she keeps 34 goats on 23 hectares; as well as on a young couple, aged 28 and 29, who also raise goats as well as growing "green" vegetables. All the households profiled are happy having chosen an arduous and frugal lifestyle "in magnificent surroundings" with "lovely personal interactions". Locals maintain informal and non-cash-based exchanges in a barter economy of which newcomers' happily become a part, enriching the community by their innovations.
If it all sounds to good to be true --it is. Without the subsidies, the newcomers would never have survived. Which raises the question: "Is a worthwhile purpose served via the conservation of family-based agriculture?" The subject is too complex to deal with adequately here, however, Le Monde is implicitly endorsing the movement "back to the land" by commissioning seven articles on the subject. Interestingly, the magazine of the weekend edition features another article on the "small is beautiful" theme, this time about private individuals' cottage industry enterprises, be they car rentals, laundry machine use, or airbnb. The article explains that although experiences using the French peer-to-peer car rental application, Drivy, vary, generally the customer satisfaction is higher than that registered by users of corporate car rental companies like Hertz or Avis. The personal touch (and lower cost) accounts for the forgiving nature of the clients, although there are aspects of the growing practice that present challenges for peer-to-peer entrepreneurs. For instance, airbnb requires potential lodgers to submit a profile that includes a photo, inviting racial discrimination. (A Harvard Business School study of airbnb found blacks received 12% lower returns on their offerings than other hosts.) Hosts offering cars, lodgings or other services rarely see income generated as meaning taxes ought to be paid; in fact, the appeal of peer-to-peer rentals is their black market nature. Those offering a room to a stranger in return for cash are often freelancers or the unemployed, trying to make ends meet.
What the article in Le Monde (which is the newspaper of France's left-leaning intellectual elite), points out is the irresistibility of the peer-to-peer market , which could not exist without the help of the computer applications developed by the original authors of the concept, many of whom seek financing for start-ups that operate in effect as holding companies for several peer-to-peer networks, in effect ending the enterprise's days "under the radar" of regulators. With expansion, come the lawyers.
However, in France, the popularity sites de partage --peer-to-peer sharing sites-- share with neo-ruraliens is based on the same premise: the faith that when people "make do" --away from the prying and rapacious eyes of the State-- something better and more human emerges. Which is understandable in a country where the state is so much more present than the U.S. and large-scale solutions to the country's long-term problems nowhere in sight. "Faire avec" --to make do with what is at hand-- is perhaps the best characteristic of the average Frenchman. So let us praise neo-ruraliens and those who say partager c'est gagner --to share is to win. They may be the country's best hope.
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