Barring a reversal of the situation, it is he who will take the head of the FNSEA on April 13, following the renewal this Wednesday, March 29 of the board of directors of the powerful agricultural union organization. At 49, Arnaud Rousseau is the only candidate in the running to succeed Christiane Lambert, who announced in December her decision not to run for a third term.
There was a radical change in style between the Maine-et-Loire sow breeder, who wanted to be “the defender of all agricultural models”, and this great cereal producer from Île-de-France, at the head of the food giant Avril. If we had to find a filiation, it is of course another figure of the FNSEA, Xavier Beulin, who died suddenly in 2017, that we immediately think of.
Filiation with Xavier Beulin
It was with him that Arnaud Rousseau took his first steps in agricultural trade unionism. And it is above all he who replaced Xavier Beulin at the head of Avril, formerly Sofiprotéol, considered as the industrial and financial arm of the oilseed and protein crop sector in France (6.9 billion euros in sales). business in 2021).
But unlike his mentor, Arnaud Rousseau was not forced to stop his studies to take over the family business. After studying at the European Business School, he had several experiences in the private sector, in a German seed company, or even at the wine merchant Nicolas.
In 2002, after military training to become a reserve officer, he ended up joining the family farm: a gigantic 700-hectare farm of rapeseed, beets and wheat, located in Trocy-en-Multien, a small town in Seine- et-Marne, of which he has also been the mayor since 2014. As were, before him, his father and his great-grandfather…
A serious accident in 2010
A few years later, at the age of 36, he was the victim of a serious accident, one of those that makes you think about life. Perched at the top of a wheat storage silo, he fell 9 meters high and broke both legs, before climbing back up alone, using his arms. «What to realize that everything can change in a very short time», he testified recently in the podcast “Declic”.
Once back on his feet, he will go to travel the 1,500 kilometers of Santiago de Compostela «to calibrate things well, and take the time in a world that has little of it”. Even today, the man, who loves to walk, says he does a lot of hiking with his wife and three children.
Tense relations with the peasant confederation
So what should we expect from this mandate? In a letter sent in mid-December to union officials in the form of a profession of faith, Arnaud Rousseau said his desire to “to get the FNSEA out of a posture of a besieged citadel”. “This requires that we collectively carry the voice of an offensive agriculture, open to dialogue, which explains the difficulties of its daily life, but which refuses to be confined by ideologies, unacceptable violence, and the sirens of decline”, he pointed out.
A speech which is not likely to arrange the already tense relations with the other agricultural unions, in the forefront of which the Peasant Confederation, which has been fighting for months against the model of mega-basins defended by the FNSEA. Especially since, according to rumours, Arnaud Rousseau should – like Xavier Beulin – keep his double role as president of the FNSEA and the Avril group.
«At least with Rousseau, the big grain farmers, who have always led the FNSEA, will no longer advance in hiding. They will be able to transparently promote their model of agro-industry based on gigantic export farms,” plague Nicolas Girod, the spokesman of the Peasant Confederation.
Defense of “vegetable” agriculture
In the opinion of other observers, the positions of Arnaud Rousseau, whom we saw marching in January in Paris against the ban on neonicotinoids, are not so caricatural as it seems. «He is fully aware that we will have to lead the transition towards a less carbon-intensive and less chemical agriculture, deciphers the agricultural economist Jean-Marie Séronie. But his bet is that, to get there, we will have to invest massively in supporting farmers and in biological and technological innovations. »
Internally, the question that torments is that of the representation of breeders, whose future could darken with the departure of Christiane Lambert. As Jean-Marie Séronie points out, the Avril group has just separated from its livestock-related activities, showing that “Arnaud Rousseau’s bet is that the future of food will be primarily plant-based”.
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A long-awaited congress
For his 77e national congress, which takes place from Tuesday March 28 to Thursday March 30 in Angers, the FNSEA program is loaded: in addition to electing a new board of directors, the 1,200 delegates will have to adopt the orientation report for the three coming years.
Some interventions are also expected, such as those of the climatologist Valérie Masson-Delmotte or the writer and academician Erik Orsenna. Among the ministers present, Marc Fesnault, for agriculture, must make the trip, just like Christophe Béchu, for ecological transition.
The congress will end Thursday evening with the last intervention of Christiane Lambert as president of the agricultural union.