Chirac pats rumps to calm rural fears

Jacques Chirac contemplated Jardin, the 1,701kg Maine-Anjou bull, with solemnity. Photographers, cameramen and not a few of the 610,000 French people who visited the eight-day annual farmers' fair swarmed around the President in a terrible din.

But Jardin, consecrated "heaviest male at the Salon de l'Agriculture" was not impressed. His dull brown eyes stared vacantly at the French head of state; dust had settled on the vast expanse of his brown and white back.

"If you massage him with beer he'll be as delicious as Kobe beef!" Mr Chirac announced, turning to Jardin's dumbfounded keepers. As the President was swept away on another wave of jostling security men, the beef farmers consulted one another. Did he mean they should mix beer with Jardin's feed? And what was Kobe meat, they wondered?

Three of Mr Chirac's great affections - farmers, beer and Japan - had momentarily converged to mystify them. It was wasted breath. Since bull meat is not very tasty, Jardin is likely to end up as hamburger in school canteens.

A few minutes later, Mr Chirac was quaffing champagne to celebrate the "baptism" of Parisien and Parisienne, two-day-old male and female calves of the Salers breed, named after their birth in the big city.

As the President headed off to his rendezvous with two oxen, a cart and accordeon-playing peasants from the MidiPyrenees, a cattle farmer from Cantal watched adoringly from a distance. "He's the first one who got help for us," the farmer gushed. "He's the first one who defended our interests."

The image of "the farmers' best friend" is one that Mr Chirac has cultivated ever since he served a two-year stint as minister of agriculture and rural development 25 years ago. His probable rival in the 2002 presidential election, the Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, spent three hours at the Salon de l'Agriculture so Mr Chirac had to outdo him.

For four hours he filled his lungs with barnyard smells and soiled the presidential shoes with mud and manure. No effort seemed too great. There were cows' rumps to be patted, children to be kissed, a strawberry-andmilk "cocktail" to be drunk through a straw, and endless samplings of cheese, steak and sausage.

Aides from the Elysee palace followed in the President's wake, stuffing gifts into rucksacks. There was a book entitled Of Beasts and Men, a kitsch copper-sheet basrelief of a cow, a T-shirt and umbrella with the salon logo, an oldfashioned, metallic holder filled with glass pints of "Mountain Milk" and enough food to see the Elysee through a siege.

On his visit, Mr Jospin had praised "the living link between farmers and the French population". For Mr Chirac, the attachment went without saying. "I would like to greet all the children who are going to stay on French farms, to see peasants who make what we eat," he told 500 Paris students who had won a free holiday. "I wish them a good week in the countryside bien de chez nous."

If the French feel the country is "really [their] home", it is probably because they moved to cities much later than most of their fellow Europeans. Underneath their arrogant sophistication, Parisians yearn for rural life. Although farmers now represent only a tiny proportion of the working population, 80 per cent of France is still countryside and mountains, making it the biggest farm in Europe.

All of which helps to explain why the agriculture minister moved his office to the Salon de l'Agriculture for its duration, and why virtually every politician of national standing visited the fair before it closed on Sunday evening. And why even the lowliest, white-haired shepherd from Savoy felt emboldened to implore Mr Chirac: "My lambs were eaten by wolves, and I still haven't received compensation." Mr Chirac parted with the soothing words: "The government must pay you". But the wolves that really sent shivers through the farmers at the Porte de Versailles fairground were 308km away in Brussels. The mood at the show was anxious, overshadowed by negotiations to reform the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Suckler cows and extensive cattle farming were not receiving enough priority in Agenda 2000, the leader of the young farmers' association complained. "Not enough, that's certain," Mr Chirac agreed.

Despite the President's assertion that Bonn "is fluctuating in the right direction", the farmers wanted to know whether the German government had really given up on "co-financing".

As for the EU Agriculture Commissioner, Mr Franz Fischler, "he had better not come to the Salon," Mr Luc Guyau, the president of the French farmers' association, said. "He doesn't understand anything, and he would not be well received here."

A 1998 study by the French finance ministry shows how much French farmers stand to lose. If all EU price support and subsidies were cut tomorrow, their income would fall by up to 61 per cent. "French peasants can rest assured of my determination and of that of the government to defend their legitimate interests, which are the interests of France," Mr Chirac told the crowd at the Salon. "We shall be extremely vigilant, for the issue is far from settled." And should Paris be forced to compromise on CAP reforms, it's a safe bet the President will blame Mr Jospin.