Arnault's estate on the outskirts of Paris is a very ordinary-looking small manor house that is indistinguishable from other French farmsteads.

There was a small piece of land, with white walls and red tiles, surrounded by a white wooden fence, and a few cows were walking around at will, grazing and chewing.

It looks peaceful.

France, a country where its land area is not large, in fact, when it comes to the level of agriculture, France can be said to be the best in the European Union.

There is no doubt and no other possibility, France is the largest agricultural producer in Europe. The main products are wheat, barley, corn, fruits and vegetables, and the wine production is the largest in the world. At present, France's agriculture has a high degree of modernization, and its agricultural products can not only meet the needs of its own country, but also export a large number of agricultural products, and its agricultural output value accounts for 22% of the total agricultural output value of the European Union, and the export volume of agricultural products has long ranked first in Europe.

The development of agriculture in France is very interesting, and it is a kind of "rational agriculture" development idea.

The first is the mechanization of agriculture, which was realized in the agricultural production of France in the 60s of the 20th century, which opened the path of mechanized development of agricultural production in France. The investment in machinery in agricultural planting, processing and other industries is increasing, and agricultural machinery is constantly developing in the direction of intelligence and efficiency. In the mechanized production of agriculture in France, the government has formulated a number of development policies: encouraging specialized production, expanding the scope of agricultural production and operation, implementing the joint development of industry, agriculture and business, and using supporting machinery for agricultural production, etc., which have improved the level of mechanization and production efficiency of agricultural development.

But at the same time, they also pay attention to the protection of the agricultural environment.

In the 80s of the last century, a large number of chemical fertilizers and pesticides were widely used in French agriculture, which increased the yield of land to a certain extent, but also brought about a series of problems such as soil compaction, fertility decline, soil erosion, destruction of biological chain and biodiversity, degradation of the ecological environment, reduction of the quality of agricultural products and decline in international market competitiveness. This production model, which ignores quality and the environment, has triggered a reflection on the part of farmers and agricultural science and technology workers. To this end, France put forward the concept of "rational agriculture", and took the development of "rational agriculture" as the foundation for the development of its own agriculture, forming the "rational culture" of French agriculture. In the process of modern agricultural planting, the economic interests of producers, consumer needs and environmental protection should be considered in an all-round way to achieve sustainable agricultural development.

In order to further encourage the development of agroecology and agro-processing, the French government also issued the "Agro-Agro-Agriculture 2012 Plan" in 2008, which aims to increase the production of agro-agriculture and at the same time triple the area of agro-agriculture to 6% of the arable area.

In fact, there are many characteristics of the development of modern agriculture in France that are worth learning.

For example, small and medium-sized farms and family farms predominate.

In order to modernize agriculture, the French government began to take measures to develop large-scale agriculture in the 60s of the 20th century, but it did not blindly seek to be big, but encouraged the development of small and medium-sized family farms, and at the same time suppressed ultra-small-scale farmers. In 1975 farms over 50 hectares accounted for only 10 per cent of French farms, but accounted for 40 per cent of the country's land area. In 1997, there were 680,000 farms in France, with an average land area well above the EU standard of 18.4 hectares. By the 80s of the 20th century, 80% of the more than 1.2 million farms in France were family farms, with 76% arable land.

The development of family farms in France is also marked by a decrease in number and an increase in scale.

In 2000, the number of family farms in France fell from 16,600 in 1970 to 7,100 in 2000, and the average land area of family farms increased from 19 hectares in 1970 to 42 hectares in 2000.

In fact, this model of France is also of great reference significance for China. China is different from the United States, there is not such a wide plain area, to engage in the model of super farms. The capital in the hands of the common people is also limited, and they can't afford to play the routine of high-tech operations of the rice country farm. However, the simple small-scale peasant economy is not enough in today's ever-changing world. After all, the smallholder economy means high costs and low efficiency, and it is very difficult to reduce costs. At this time, it is actually quite good to learn from the French smallholder model.

Of course, the specific operation has to be studied by a special person, and if the national conditions are different, it must not be copied.

The second is to attach importance to the cultivation of agricultural talents, France attaches great importance to agricultural education, and conducts training in production technology for farmers during the slack time. In France, there is a special agricultural training institute for the training of agricultural engineers, veterinarians and managers. In France, the government stipulates that farm operators must have a high school degree or above and hold an agricultural technician certificate before they can operate independently on farms. In China, peasants were once synonymous with "illiterate," and what does this mean? Without sufficient learning experience and learning ability, it will be very difficult to develop and apply new technologies, and even sometimes it is a very good technology, because you don't understand, don't understand, but don't trust and don't want to use it...... This situation is not uncommon among the people.

Fortunately, this situation is changing, more and more college students are graduating from college or choosing to return to their hometowns to farm, which is equivalent to improving the education level of the entire peasant class in disguise, and this situation will continue to happen in the future, and the peasant group will gradually keep up with the pace of the country.

Then there is the regionalization of agricultural production.

Specialization in the development of agriculture in France is divided into three types: regional, farm, and operation, of which regional specialization is the use of natural resources to rationally distribute and distribute various agricultural productions to form specialized agricultural commercial areas; farm specialization is to classify farms according to their business contents, and most of them only carry out the production and operation of one kind of agricultural and sideline products in farm specialization; while specialized farms are to distribute traditional agricultural production to enterprises outside the farms, and develop the agricultural production of farms into commercial production. French agricultural production is developed according to regional characteristics, and modern production techniques are used in agricultural planting and animal husbandry. France is now divided into 23 regions, forming the world-famous "dairy farming belt in Normandy", "grape planting and processing belt in Champagne", "grain planting belt in the Paris region", etc., truly forming a pattern of regional planting and specialized production.

Standardization of agricultural production.

Agricultural production in France has maintained a family-based business pattern, with an average area of 50 hectares of land operated by an agribusiness in 2000. In order for agricultural products to go international, they must be standardized. Agricultural standardization is a huge and complex system engineering, including the whole process of pre-production, production and post-production, involving production, processing and circulation. As we all know, the EU has strict requirements and restrictions on the production and processing of agricultural products, and France, as a core country, will inevitably implement stricter standardization in agricultural production and agricultural product processing.

France is a relatively successful country that started agricultural modernization earlier, and has some successful experience in agricultural modernization. In the process of China's modernization, agricultural modernization is obviously lagging behind, so the study of the modernization of French agriculture after the war will help find a correct path for the modernization and development of China's agriculture.

In fact, there are really a lot of French labels, far more than one or two.

The development of agriculture or industry is only one of them. The French people also have very interesting labels, such as romance, laziness, and love parades.

Love to parade, really, the French people are famous for their love of making trouble. It seems that he likes to march in his bones, and he puts it into practice at every turn.

Demonstrations and strikes are almost the same thing for the French, and of course they do so for many reasons.

The French like to go on vacation, every year during the winter and summer vacations, the whole society in France is relatively quiet, a song and dance is peaceful, but as soon as the holiday is over, there is a new round of social crisis, and the whole country is full of workers.

At the end of the summer holidays in September, France enters the peak strike season, with strikes by employees of banks, post offices, electricity companies, airlines, railways, subways, and public transport being the most common, but strikes in other industries such as teachers, medical staff, journalists, and state civil servants are also commonplace. There are many names for French strikes, which are specifically defined in the labor law.

There are so-called warning strikes, in which work is stopped for a short period of time to put pressure on employers, there are "bottleneck" strikes, in which work stops in a specific department or at a critical time, there are rotational strikes, in which different departments or types of work in an enterprise take turns to stop working, and there are solidarity strikes, in which strikers in support of strikers in other industries or enterprises stop working. But the purpose of the strike is nothing more than to demand an increase in wages and a reduction in working hours. In contrast, the strike of French civil aviation workers has the greatest impact on the people, and the government is the most afraid. But unfortunately, it is also the most inconvenient for innocent foreigners.

Why do the French go on strike? Many French people say that this is the last basic right of the French people. After industrialization, in the social and economic life of France, among the three major factors of capital, land and labor, the rights and interests of labor providers are the smallest, and strikes have become an important means to regulate labor-management relations and the relationship between various interest groups in society. In France, the most well-known trade union organizations are the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) and the General Union of Workers' Forces (FO), which are distributed in all sectors of society and industries, and even officials of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the public security police are members of these organizations.

These trade unions, especially in the sensitive sectors of the state-owned transport sector, such as railways and aviation, do have the power to influence French society as a whole. I can't remember how many times the trade unions in France's transportation sector have been paralyzed by demands for higher wages and better working conditions. As soon as Prime Minister Raffarin came to power, he was determined to reform, and as a result, a decision to reform pensions led to a general strike of trade unions in the transportation, education, communications, postal, medical and social services sectors, forming the largest national general strike in France since 1995.

The main point of Raffarin's retirement reform plan is to appropriately increase the number of years for employees in the public sector to pay retirement insurance premiums under the premise that the retirement age remains unchanged, so that they can finally pay the same insurance premiums as private sector employees for 40 years before they can get a full pension. In addition, a number of provisions will need to be amended, such as the definition of a civil servant in a "hardship occupation". Since 1853, France has recognized train drivers, line maintainers of the French telephone and telecommunications company, and attendants at the sorting center of the post office as "hard occupations", but after 150 years of changes, working conditions have changed dramatically. Whether or not to allow these people to enjoy retirement benefits from the age of 55 onwards is hotly debated in France.

But it would be offensive to ask nearly 360,000 people across the country to give up their retirement benefits in these so-called "hard jobs." In all of this, the French pension system has many loopholes. Without reforms, the government will spend 151% more on pensions by 2040 than in 2020, reaching 85.2 billion euros. With fewer people in employment and longer life expectancy, it is clear that such a retirement system is unsustainable.

However, the government's "big truth" is not as good as the "small truth" of the people. More than 10 million people, or one in six of the country's people, took part in a nationwide general strike against pension reform, which paralyzed France's roads, railways, airlines, urban transport and social service systems. In some cities, demonstrations were on the same scale as the 1968 "May Storm" in France. According to the statistics of the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the social unrest that lasted for more than a month had a huge negative impact on the French economy. The turnover of small and medium-sized enterprises fell by 30% to 40% in the month. Sales in major department stores in Paris fell by 10% year-on-year. The strike cost SNCF 20 million euros in one day and 1 million euros in damage to Paris bus company.

However, despite the inconvenience caused by strikes to the lives of ordinary people, polls have shown that the majority of French people are understanding of the strikers, and casual strikes have become a culture.

Regardless of the reason, everyone can strike, and the common people have turned a blind eye to it. First of all, this is a right granted by the French Constitution, which no one can take away and no one can change. Secondly, it is a feature of the French mechanism of regulating interests, and in addition to parliamentary debates, the demonstration of power in the streets is also very important. The marching crowd and the government gendarmerie are a zero-sum game, and the brave wins. Many of the government's regulations that undermine the interests of the strikers, including the employer's decision to dismiss employees, will be changed by the strong will of the strikers.

Even diplomats and gendarmes are going to strike, can you believe it at home? But in France it just happened.

On 1 December 2003, all French diplomats and staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs held the largest global strike in history, and nearly 200 officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs demonstrated in front of the French Senate. The results of the strike speak for themselves, with the closure of most of France's embassies and consulates, cultural centers and French schools around the world, as well as serious disruptions to the internal workings of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. President Jacques Chirac expressed deep concern about this, while Foreign Minister de Villepin called on the striking subordinates to resume their work as soon as possible.

This is France, and the French...... Although it is only the tip of the iceberg, it is not difficult to see the leopard. France is really a very interesting country, and the French are really a very interesting group of people.