The sheep for Breton hops

It's summer in northern Brittany. We are 20 kilometers from the pink granite coastline, where the proximity to the sea softens the climate. It is hot, and just humid enough to guarantee soil fertility. Here, in the middle of the Breton countryside, nestles the Lezerzot hop farm, where Antoine Floury and Anaïs Langlais are carrying out the project of creating a Breton and organic hop industry, to supply the local craft breweries. An ambitious idea, which was born during a car trip.

Back in summer 2016, Antoine Floury and three of his friends drove towards the Crozon peninsula to enjoy the End of the World Festival. Freshly graduated from a Master's degree in Plant Functional Biology, it is time to make a choice for him: to engage in fundamental research for the public domain, or to be hired by a major industrialist. Antoine is not attracted to either option. What he is passionate about is the study of all the interactions of living beings: the symbioses between fauna and flora, science, humans and the earth. There is little chance of satisfying this passion in the traditional ways of research, whether public or private.

It's 3:00 p.m., Antoine is sitting in the back of this car. Torn by this dilemma, he asks his friends for advice. After a few minutes of discussion, one of them will share a founding idea: “Why don't you start your own business? By growing your own hops for example? ”. In Antoine's mind, everything lit up, in his own words “It was there, in this car, at 27, that I knew what I wanted to do with my life.”

Growing hops, a good idea! Especially since one of the 4 passengers in the car is a brewer, for Antoine, it is the assurance of quickly having a foot in the world of brewing. And after all, hops are an ancestral culture in France. It has spread throughout much of France since the discovery of the sanitizing properties of the plant in the 10th century. Only Brittany seems to have saved from this crop, its hop supply being historically ensured by trade with Great Britain.

Today in France, almost all production is concentrated in Grand-Est and Hauts-de-France. Two regions perfectly suited to this plant, which thrives in rich and humid soils. A stroke of luck! Breton soil also offers these two characteristics. In addition, the region has an advantage compared to the North and the East: it is less subject to major droughts, which are often fatal to hop plants. With this information, the prospect of launching the sector is getting closer for the young man. Recognizing the magnitude of this task, he prepared himself solidly.

Back to school for Antoine. He spent a year at the agricultural training center in Guingamp, then obtained his professional certificate in organic gardening. His training only confirmed his conviction. Freshly graduated, it's time for him to settle in. After a few months of research, he set his sights on a small farm called Lezerzot located in the town of Brédily, in his native Côtes-d'Armor. Here, in Lezerzot, there is a farm surrounded by 26 hectares of land that was historically rejected by cereal farmers because of its humidity. But while the humidity of these lands is an obstacle to the cultivation of cereals, it is essential for that of hops. On June 26, 2018, Antoine moved to Lezerzot with Anaïs, his partner, to start their life as farmers.

The recipe for their hop farm is quite inspired. Here, everything revolves around the concept of biological symbiosis. At the heart of the system is the relationship between hops and sheep. “This is what we call agropastoralism, an ancient technique that is widely used in New Zealand” assures the farmer. In hop fields, sheep remove leaves from the base of the plants, thus limiting the spread of soil-borne diseases. If a pathogen was ever present on the leaves eaten by sheep, it would be destroyed in the animal's digestive tract, before being transformed into natural fertilizer. In Lezerzot, this essential leaf removal was given to a herd of sheep from Belle-Ile, a breed that was on the verge of extinction in the 1980s, and whose total number is less than 1000 individuals. On paper, this balance can only work. Regrettably, agriculture is sometimes an ungrateful sector, in which hard work and respect for the environment rarely go hand in hand with profitability.

Even if there are several great stories of Parisian managers who left to set up their organic farm in the provinces, the sector is rather deserted. According to INSEE, between 2010 and 2020, the number of farms in France fell by 20%. In addition, two out of ten farmers live below the poverty line, and this trend is increasing. Antoine and Anaïs also came up against this economic reality during the first harvest, where they obtained a result 10 times lower than their expectations. In short, agriculture is not an El Dorado. So why embark on such a complicated challenge, with so few certainties about the economic viability of the project?

Out of passion at first, and although they do not have the illusion of making a fortune with this system, they still found the key to making their business profitable. Antoine Floury and Anaïs Langlois break free from the usual rules of the agricultural world. At home, no cooperatives that dictate the rules to be applied, no international exports as do the giant farms in eastern France, and therefore no intermediaries. They want to be completely independent, by supplying local brewers, whose number has increased dramatically in recent years. So every summer, young hop farmers open their farms to several curious visitors. This approach is quite logical for these farmers, who are thus cultivating a new virtuous relationship, from human to human.