The faces of Hectar
Bérénice Giot: "I always wanted to work in a rural environment with animals
Bérénice, a breeder at Hectar's Godets farm, tells us about her daily life with some 80 beautiful ruminants!
Hectar
19/1/2022
Nicolas Buisson is a 35-year-old agricultural engineer who worked in finance before returning to the world of agriculture. His first career served him well when he set up his own organic market gardening business in Finistère: business plans and market studies are part of the baggage of a good agricultural entrepreneur. He uses his double experience to help the Hectar Tremplin training programme.
Aspart of the Hectar Springboard training, you have mentored four agricultural entrepreneurship projects. What did you observe?
Agriculture lacks innovative economic approaches. With Hectar Tremplin, it is first of all the approach of personalising the project leaders that I found interesting: they are people, places, regions, practices... With an essential vision: to show that it is possible to earn a decent wage in agriculture. And thus to give an example to others that they can undertake and set up. The exchanges with the project leaders are very rich but they often need to be challenged on the profitability of their model.
What are the pitfalls to avoid when undertaking an agricultural project?
First of all, you need to set foot on a farm before you start, meet farmers in the activity and region you are considering. Also check that the project is in line with your lifestyle. Tomorrow's agriculture must adapt to people's aspirations and be practised on a human scale, so be careful about the size of your project: a large farm is less easy to manage, which often means hiring and therefore starting with a different business plan. The alternative may be to join a collaborative project, as I did. This allows us to exchange ideas on a daily basis. And then we offer joint sales at the farm, which is attractive to customers.
What would be your advice for developing an economically viable project?
Project leaders need to take better account of the commercial dimension of their future activity. How and where to sell my production? Because you will have to do packaging, canvass a customer, negotiate with a supermarket, have management skills, etc. In "agricultural entrepreneur", there is a farmer and an entrepreneur, with the necessary agility. This can be learned, and the Hectar Tremplin training course conveys this message.
Photo credit: Benoît Drouet
