France

Estimated Production of Silage, 1984-2000, Million Tonnes Dry Matter (DM)

Estimated Production of Silage 1984-2000

Source: World Silage Report – Wilkinson and Toivonen, May 2003

Agriculture is significant to France in terms of food production, employment and land use. France is one of Europe’s largest producers of silage and has around five million hectares of grassland harvested for conservation each year.

Agricultural trends1

In 2002, some 900,000 people were employed in agricultural holdings. In total there are approximately 650,000 farms, of which about 130,000 are dairy farms and 155,000 have beef herds. In total there are close 20 million head of cattle. There are also more than two million goats and sheep.

The major agricultural trends in recent years are the result of economic pressures and increasing mechanisation:

  • The number of people employed in agriculture decrease to half what it was 25 years ago.
  • Fewer farms, more than one million in 1988, but the size is increasing, from an average of 38.5ha in 1995 to 42ha in 2000.
  • The number of cattle herds has decreased while the size has increased. The average dairy herd now has more than 34 head of cattle.
  • National milk production is over 22 billion litres a year. As a result of EU milk quotas cattle farmers are moving away from dairy to beef.
  • Organic production is one of the growing areas in French agriculture; increasing by more than 25% in the past 5 years. The current growth is stabilizing with an average of 6%, with more than 11,000 organic farms.
  • Another growing activity relates to horses, which have doubled in number over the past 25 years and now are approaching one million.

Silage production trends

As one of the largest producers of silage in Europe, in France each year around 70 million tonnes fresh weight is converted into around 20 million tonnes of DM. Though the majority is maize silage, out of 12 million ha of grassland, 5 million are harvested for conservation. A very small amount of silage is made using legumes or other crops such as beet tops.

The proportion of the total area of grass and forage crops harvested for silage has increased at the expense of the area used for grazing. In most regions the area of grass harvested for conservation has decreased in recent years, except in the mountain regions where it has remained relatively constant and in those areas where milk production is on a large scale.

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1 Agreste, Statistique agricole annuelle, 2003 ; Bima 2003, Ministère de l’Agriculture ; Agence bio, 2004.