This Thursday is Bastille Day and the warm reception enjoyed by Irish farming football fans on their recent trip to the Euros is still fresh in their memories.

This is welcome, because farming relations between Paris and Dublin have otherwise been strained in recent times. France has been pushing for EU measures to curtail milk production in an effort to solve the dairy price crisis – not a popular move among expanding Irish farmers.

The French also want to ban glyphosate, the herbicide ingredient widely used by Irish farmers.

Good red tape

So, is France just obsessed with burdening farmers with more red tape? In recent times, the Gallic love of regulation has also yielded some positive results.

France was one of the first countries to adopt legislation to combat food waste. Its property watchdog has come out against foreign investors indulging in land grabs and pricing farmers out of the market.

And a new law will force all food processors to publish their accounts, so that farmers can see where the money is going. Wouldn’t you love to know how much your beef factory is making?

Similar to Ireland

In many ways, France and Ireland remain similar when it comes to farming. An isolated BSE case there earlier this year meant that French beef lost its negligible risk status, just like its Irish counterpart.

Animal health issues are all-important for both countries’ exports, with a bluetongue outbreak freezing French cattle movement for the best part of the past year.

On the dairy side, French and Irish farmers alike have been hit by falling prices. Aidan Brennan witnessed it first-hand at the recent European Dairy Farmers’ congress in Brittany, and he brought home videos of French dairy farms.

Flooding

Andy Doyle was in southwestern France late last year and he too visited a dairy farm as well as maize growers.

The weather appeared to be too dry at the time – that was before torrential rain flooded thousands of hectares of crops around Paris this summer.

Falling prices have awakened the French farmers’ legendary ability to protest, with massive tractorcades parading through the country’s cities and towns last autumn. This led Charlie Hebdo, the satirical newspaper targeted by terrorists in 2014, to publish a heartfelt editorial in defence of cash-strapped farmers.

Dawn Meats investment

The protests have not deterred Dawn Meats from investing in the country with the acquisition of a large stake in one of France’s largest meat processors, Elivia. The farmers supplying those factories visited Ireland and told Odile Evans how they organise in producer groups to negotiate on prices and specs.

This heady mix – as well as low land prices – has proved attractive to some Irish farmers, including the Gardiner family from Co Galway, who moved to France 10 years ago.