No, it wasn’t better before. In any case, not for women farmers, like the mother of director Edouard Bergeon. “It hurts me to read or hear all these neo-rural people who want to go back in time,” she wrote to him in 2023. This letter will encourage him to recount in images the incredible fight waged for sixty years by the women of farmers to be able to exist socially. And their struggle goes far beyond the framework of rurality.
For his first feature film, In the Name of the Earth (more than 2 million admissions in 2019), Edouard Bergeon was inspired by the story of his father, who committed suicide after the fire on their farm . This time he is interested in those who, alongside the peasants, take care of milking, hay, chickens, while “running” the house and raising the children, and this for a long time without salary or status, neither maternity leave nor retirement.
That’s why Jeannette Gros, 82, left her parents’ farm as a teenager to study literature, philosophy and become a professor. Before being forced to return. It was there that she decided to get involved, with the Mutualité sociale agricole du Doubs, before becoming its national president.
She is one of the pioneers filmed here, in her living environment, with Christiane Lambert, ex-president of the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions, Marie-Paule Méchineau, of Peasant Workers, and Anne-Marie Crolais, 72 years old, former agricultural unionist.
Historical reminders
The latter was already present in Moi, agricultrice, by Delphine Prunault (2022). The archives of his visit to “Apostrophes”, in February 1982, for the release of his autobiography L’Agricultrice (Ramsay, 1982) are still shocking, showing a condescending Bernard Pivot.
Edouard Bergeon also gives a wide voice to the Piquard family, in the Meuse, from the grandparents, Marie-Claude and Claude, a couple of retired farmers aged 80, to their granddaughter, Angélique, 12, who intends to take over. Marie-Claude and Claude remember, with a keen eye, their first meeting or their first manifestation.
Certain historical reminders make us smile, such as that of the emancipatory role, for the farmer, of the arrival of VAT. What a long way we’ve come! If today the profession remains difficult, underpaid and in crisis, the film strives to show that it is also a source of pleasure and that it is practiced with passion.
Three young breeders embody this future. Among them, Claire Gervais, 29, and her 300 dairy cows in La Manche. A few days before giving birth, she knows that she will benefit from eight weeks of maternity leave. In the meantime, due to not being able to take care of her cows, she feeds… her Instagram account, “Claire_maman_agricultrice”, followed by 15,700 subscribers.
