Dystopia
“My father had thirty-five hectares and wanted to live like a real farmer, not like a bounty hunter, he committed suicide because he could no longer live decently on his farm”*.
Sixties: the industrialization of agriculture is accompanied, in the thickest silence, by the acts of despair of many peasants. Pointed out as incapable of adapting to the “modern” world, condemned to disappearance by economists who recommend dividing the number of agricultural operations by ten in twenty years, excluded from aid which is only intended for farmers deemed competent and dynamic, they only found a rope to protest one last time.
A few decades later, “modernized” farmers often take the same definitive path. Subjected to the constant decline in agricultural prices in many sectors, pushed to go into debt to perform, several hundred take their own lives each year. In a report published in September 2013**, the InVS estimated the excess mortality by suicide among farmers compared to the French population in general at 20%, especially in the cattle breeding sector (meat and milk). . An estimate undoubtedly largely underestimated.