Visits with the Tuck School, report with pictures!

We had a pleasant week in the company of students from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and are very happy to have been able to accompany them during part of their stay in France. Over 10 days, they were able to explore our country around the theme "Sustainability in French Agriculture," and here is what we saw with them :

• Friday, December 1 : A lecture about trends and challenges in French agriculture by Marine Raffray, AgroParisTech engineer from 2010.
• Tuesday, December 5 (morning) : A visit to the vineyard and agroecological farm of Valérie and Gaël Dupont in the Champagne area, including a tasting.
• Tuesday, December 5 (afternoon) : A visit to the agro-industrial complex of the Cristal Union sugar refinery in Bazancourt, specializing in sugar beets.
• Thursday, December 7 : A visit to the Grignon experimental farm of the AgroParisTech school.

In addition to the introductory lecture, we selected these locations because they represent several facets of French agriculture that we deemed important to show them :

Marine Raffray's lecture on the major challenges and trends in French agriculture at the "Maison des Ingénieurs Agros" in Paris.

A vineyard on the leading edge of agroeclogical practices, which is willing to limit their profits to preserve their (our) common capital: soil, biodiversity, climate, air and water quality. Their yield loss is compensated with an important decrease in expenses (fertilizers and biocide inputs), and with a higher price for good quality products. Nonetheless, they are not as supported with public subsidies as with the conventional farmers, in regard of the efforts for common good they provide.

An industrial complex gathering thousand of farmers who organized themselves in cooperatives to enable them to heavily invest in their productions, building factories that treats millions of tons of sugarbeet, and optimising every possible coproduct in a circular economy approach

A public school experimental farm whose mission is to welcome general public, school and students, and who leads scientific studies to tackle agriculture greenhouse gases emissions, with a need to remain lucrative to be relevant regarding farmers and profesionnals.

We really enjoyed preparing these visits, and we are very satisfied with the results. We sincerely thank Fatima and Annika for their organization and everyone who contributed, as well as the students for their interest and the relevance of the questions asked. We hope they had a pleasant stay, and we look forward to possibly repeating this experience with the Tuck School and other schools worldwide in the future.

Thanks to Marine Raffray, Valérie and Gaël Dupont, the staff of the Cristal Union factory accompanied by our dear friend Daniel Genton, Sophie Carton, and Etienne Verrier for the visit to the Experimental Farm of Grignon, the presentation of the work conducted there, and the presentation of AgroParisTech in all its diversity.