They call it “our cathedral”. The new cattle shed built by four French farmers through a partnership does indeed have the wow factor of the large churches built by Renaissance kings in their historic Loire valley region.

The building in Montreuil-sur-Loir can house 100 suckler cows and 100 calves and is up to all the latest safety and animal welfare standards. It is fitted with a remote-controlled mobile calving camera that the farmers can operate from their smartphones. Cattle are housed here all year round due to poor grass growth during the dry summer, except dry cows and heifers, which are grazed on the farm’s wetter land. All animals are kept on straw bedding and fed the farm’s own crops, grown on 240ha: maize, triticale, alfalfa, fava beans, peas and a mix of rye grass and clover silage.

Pascal Langlois, Philippe Dru, Benoît Bruneau and Julien Cardot run this farm-to-fork, organic high-end suckler-to-beef farm together. Their main production is veal from calves slaughtered at five months and 160kg carcase weight by a specialist factory paying €7/kg. The cows make €4.70/kg, or €5.80 net of slaughtering costs for those they sell directly to local consumers. The farm currently has 160 cows and will kill 80 calves this year. The target is 90 calves and 50 to 60 cows annually.

The four farmers also breed pedigree Limousin bulls and have a small wood chip business. They run a tight ship: the calving interval is 365 days, and any cow not going in calf is culled. “We want to sell only the best and have a good market for veal,” said Philippe. “It is less complicated to sell at five months than later.”

The new shed is the result of a partnership built over several years. At first, Philippe, who owns the main farm, realised that no young farmer would have the financial capacity to buy him out when he would retire. So he brought in Benoît, a young farmer with no land to his name. They formed a GAEC, the well-established French legal partnership structure. “We grew the herd, but not the land,” said Benoît. “We could not produce all our feed at that point.”

Then, two years ago, Pascal, an older neighbour with contiguous land, felt the need to slow down. He entered the partnership at the same time as another landless young farmer with a good knowledge of the organic sector, Julien. Now, Julien and Pascal manage the crops while Benoît and Philippe focus on the cattle. They know the farm can continue after the two older men retire, while they each retain their ownership of their land and lease it to the partnership.

“We were able to build this shed because the four of us joined together,” said Philippe. The building cost €400,000 and they received 30% grant aid because two of the partners were young farmers. Then they borrowed the rest.

The advantages of the partnership are not only economic. “I take every second weekend off,” said Benoît.

“If I’m at a meeting somewhere, I know someone is there to do the work.” The arrangement has some downsides, too: “You need to accept that not everything is done the way you would do it yourself,” he added.

The members of the Kilnamartyra discussion group in Co Cork visited the GAEC du Petit-Pont farm last month and admired the achievements of the four French farmers, but they didn’t believe such an advanced partnership could be established in Ireland. “People wouldn’t have enough trust to have something built on someone else’s land,” said one farmer. “How do you divide a shed four ways?” asked another. They saw more potential in lighter forms of partnership observed during the trip, to share machinery or labour.