Milking the Farmers' Vote

All there is to see in French newspapers and on French television this week is picture after damn picture of politician after grinning politician patting cow after stolid cow on the backside.

This is because it is National Farm Show week, always a big event for the elected representatives of a country whose farmers are capable of plunging the place into chaos at the first hint of a fall in the price of cauliflowers.

Since, however, this year is also presidential election year, and since no one ever became president of France by ignoring the "agriculteurs", the Elysée candidates have been falling over themselves to head out to the Paris exhibition site and goose goats.

First was the conservative president, Jacques Chirac, who is standing for re-election. As the current incumbent, he got to declare the show officially open on Sunday - and then proceeded to spend a record five hours there, shaking hands, kissing cheeks and slapping well-groomed rumps.

"Ah, bravo, a beautiful beast!" cried Mr Chirac, a former agriculture minister and past master at wooing the rural vote who in 1999 famously declared: "We are all peasants". "Ah, bravo, an excellent drop of wine!" "Ah, bravo, a splendid ham!" "Bravo, a fine slice of sausage!" "Bravo, a most crunchy apple!"

Somewhere along the way he managed to express his desire for "a national policy aimed at promoting an agriculture that would be at the same time ecologically responsible and economically strong", but no one took a great deal of notice because they were too busy knocking back the Cahors and admiring the president's perma-tan.

Next came his main challenger, the Socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin, who was pelted with eggs at last year's show by farmers fed up with their perpetually falling incomes: cattlemen have seen their incomes plummet as a result of mad cow disease, winemakers are irate about growing competition from abroad and grain growers face slumping prices following an overhaul of EU subsidies.

On Monday, during his three-hour visit, Mr Jospin bravely tickled a 1,200kg Aubrac bull between the horns, downed (in quick succession) a strawberry milkshake, a glass of champagne, a slice of Bayonne ham and a chunk of foie gras, posed for a photo with a bunch of prize geese and did not even complain when an over-excited heifer left a slobbery foot-long trail of saliva on his suit jacket.

Every other presidential contender has followed the prime minister since, from the National Front leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who preached protectionism as the answer to the industry's woes and reminded everyone that he was of peasant stock, to the Green candidate, Noel Mamere, who backed more environment friendly farming methods but was careful to do so out of earshot of any actual farmers.

The endurance record went to the Liberal Democracy candidate Alain Madelin, who arrived at the fair at 7.30 yesterday morning and managed not to leave until 5pm.

For the free-market Mr Madelin, France's farmers were all "brave entrepreneurs struggling against over-regulation".

But none of this year's Elysée candidates appears to have asked themselves whether subjecting themselves to this bizarre and embarrassing ritual is actually worth it. You have to get out there and caress the cattle or you will never make it, runs the traditional logic.

But the fact is that French farmers now make up just 3.4% of the workforce. Agriculture accounts for only 2% of French gross domestic product - about half the figure 20 years ago.

In just two decades from 1980 to 2001, the number of working farmers in France has fallen by more than half to 905,500, and a mere 3.5% of the French population now lives on family farms compared to 6% in 1988 and 12% in 1970.

So, while the distant ancestors of France's few remaining farmers did indeed topple a king back in 1789, the country's modern-day politicians could probably well afford to give all this agri-aggro a miss.

Unless they actually enjoy patting cows' bottoms, of course.