France: {La France}

The French Food System

French agriculture is wonderful due to the variety of landscapes, climate and soil found there. The agricultural production is among the highest in the EU, adding up to 72.9 billion euros. But what are the sectors with the highest production value? They are wine (13.2%), milk (13.1%), cereals (13%) and cattle (9.9%).

About half of France's total territory is made up from agricultural land, that being approximately 28 million hectares! Among this land, there are 456,000 farms of an average size of 69 hectares each, and around 708,170 farmers working to provide society with food demands.

Future plans for France's food system include:

1) Production development of legume vegetables which will help limit GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions, combat imported deforestation and enhance the resilience of the systems of production. This also means that France will double any relevant area by 2030 (2 million hectares), leading to a 7% reduction in its use of nitrogen fertilisers by the end of that period.

2) Double organically farmed area by 2027 to total 18% of all agricultural land.

One of EIT Food's main tasks is to bring innovation, especially around food production and agriculture, to the market more quickly with the help of start-ups and thus to make the food system healthier and more sustainable together with SMEs.

Around 16,000 tons of snails are consumed in France each year!