The Night of the Valley

With the participation of:

• Laure Beauffigeau

  Laure Beauffigeau is an agro-ecologist and farmer in organic farming. Passionate about ecology, she conducted field as well as university studies in France and the United Kingdom where she worked in the planning of rural territories. After the birth of her children, she became a peasant. In 2017, she started the first Terre de Liens farm in the Côte d'Or, in organic farming, bringing together draft horses, cows, bees and an educational farm. She leaves Burgundy in 2021 for Mayenne, where she sets up her collective farm. She is commissioned by the CIAP 53 to set up a system of agricultural test spaces, and was elected co-president of Terre de Liens Pays de la Loire.

• Jean-François Delaitre

  A farmer in Seine et Marne, Jean-François Delaitre has a 235-hectare property where he implements a conservation agriculture approach. The search for organic fertilizers led him to methanization (anaerobic digestion) in 2012. In August 2014, O’ Terres Energies injected its first kilowatt hours into the GrDF natural gas network and the unit now produces 300 Nm3/h of green gas. A member of the French Association of Methanizer Farmers for many years and president since last year, it is the diversity of personalities, regions, productions, and processes that has since fueled his curiosity and commitment to the movement. “We are farmers first and foremost. Methanization helps us build more resilient farms and diversify economically. We are committed to all transitions: climate, agriculture, energy, and food.”

• Agnès Ducharne

  A former student of the École Normale Supérieure de Paris, Agnès Ducharne is a director of research at the CNRS, specializing in the links between the water cycle, vegetation, and climate. She works in Paris, as part of the METIS Laboratory at the Pierre Simon Laplace Institute, and was the 2021 winner of the Franco-Taiwanese Scientific Grand Prize of the Academy of Sciences for her work on the interactions between climate change, water resources, and irrigation. Concerned about ecological issues and the climate crisis, she is a member of the French Academy of Agriculture and the Ile-de-France Political Ecology Workshop (Écopolien).

• Ambre Germain

  After a general training on the benches of HEC, it is on the roads of France that Ambre Germain discovered agriculture, all its complexity and its richness. After a year of living alongside committed farmers, she knows she wants to continue to help them in their struggles. With her diploma in hand, she crossed paths with Fermcoop, which is leading the Ferme de l'Envol project, a 75-hectare agroecological farm in Essonne. She then became executive director of the cooperative which aims to develop this major project, and which proposes a new social and environmental model for agriculture.

• Nicolas Mirouze

  A winegrower in the Corbières, and a former student of Agro Paris Tech and member of the Atelier Paysan, Nicolas Mirouze took over the family estate in 1999. Prior to this, the estate had been cultivated with the systematic use of chemicals. Nicolas immediately implemented new processes to break away from the old production model. He now produces wine without the use of any inputs: the only ingredients are the grapes he grows and the conviction that drives him. Despite his success, his experience has yet to revolutionize winegrowing practices. He argues that changing the agricultural model is inseparable from the socialization of food. Change will only come about by engaging complicated power relations for an in-depth transformation of society.

• Gérard Munier

  The son of a peasant family, Gérard Munier spent his early years on a 130-hectare farm, away from a small village near Nancy. After studying economics and law, he joined Sciences Po Paris and then pursued a career in financial auditing and mergers and acquisitions consulting for more than twenty years. At 45, tired of working for investment funds, he sold his shares and moved to Buenos Aires. After eight years in South America where he runs a boutique hotel, he returns to France with the project of reconnecting with our food by co-creating with Benoit Liotard an urban agriculture project around the cultivation of micro-sprouts, by associating the social dimensions of integration and the transmission of know-how. Thus was born the Paysan Urbain in 2016. The farm started operations in 2020 and now has more than 35 employees. Two other farms have been created in Marseille (2020) and Lyon (2022).

• Félix Noblia

  Félix Noblia has been a “farmer researcher” for fifteen years on a farm in the Basque Country. He has conducted hundreds of experiments on the compatibility between agronomy, ecology, and economy. Félix has a systemic approach to agro-ecology or regenerative agriculture. This has allowed him to understand and explain the connections between agricultural practices and environmental performance (impact on greenhouse gases, soil carbon, biodiversity, the water cycle, its quality, uses, etc.). He has dedicated his life to the transformation of the food production model, from experimentation at a grassroots level to global and political issues connected to the climate crisis. In this respect, he is a strong advocate for “Régénération”, an organization that finances and supports farmers in their implementation of ecological processes and promotes the eco-benefits of a more virtuous agriculture. He is also a spokesperson for Fermes d’Avenir.

• Cédric Villani

  Cédric Villani is a French mathematician. After having taught mathematics at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon and then at the University of Lyon, he became director of the Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris in 2009 and received the Fields medal in 2010. Representative of the French mathematical community to the media and politicians, he was a Member of Parliament from 2017 to 2022. In 2018 Prime Minister Édouard Philippe entrusted him with a mission on artificial intelligence, where he evaluated the possible developments of these technologies in the agricultural sector. He is also the author of numerous books, including Théorème vivant (2012), Les Coulisses de la création with Karol Beffa (2017), and Immersion : De la science au Parlement (2019).

• Le RECHO

  Le RECHO – REfuge CHaleur (warmth) Optimisme – is a solidarity project led by Vanessa Krycève, accompanied by cooks and catering professionals, who have been working since 2016 to provide a dignified welcome for people in exile in France and Europe. Le RECHO advocates an inclusive and caring society, which celebrates living together and which puts people and the environment at the heart of its concerns. Cooking is a universal unifying language, a story of collective memory, it restores bodies and hearts, and reminds us that wealth is born in sharing.