Soil sealing: student farmers plant a future construction site in protest

Students from the prestigious school helped a tractor enter the site, disregarding a building permit for a building belonging to the air traffic control agency Eurocontrol.

Very quickly, with the help of activists, they turned over the soil and busied themselves around a small plot.

Students, members of the Earth Uprisings, farmers from the Peasant Confederation and researchers from Sud-Recherche: about thirty people were present in the middle of the afternoon.

"For us, it's truly heartbreaking to see large companies seizing the land that can nourish us and that we need to eat, especially in the city," explains Capucine.

This 20-year-old first-year student at AgroParisTech, who like the other students interviewed wanted to use a pseudonym, comes from a farming family in Auvergne.

"Relegated" farms

She finds her school "a bit out of touch because we don't really see the reality of the farm. But on the other hand, we see that there are farms on the plateau that are somewhat relegated to what's left of them."

In France, the surface area of ​​natural, agricultural and forest land is decreasing by 24.000 hectares per year, the equivalent of five football pitches per hour, according to government data from 2025.

In 2021, the 2050 target of "zero net artificialisation" (ZAN) of soils was voted on: every new hectare of concrete must be compensated.

But while a relaxation of this measure was rejected by the Constitutional Council on Thursday, the constructions on the Saclay plateau are worrying future farmers.

The site, which was still mainly agricultural at the beginning of the 21st century, was chosen in 2006 to develop a campus, where CentraleSupélec and the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines are located alongside AgroParisTech.

Businesses have also moved in.

"There are farms everywhere, but they are surrounded by new school buildings," laments Anis, 23, a first-year master's student.

Food autonomy

"It's full of empty offices," says Nils, a market gardener in the Yvelines for five years and a member of the Confédération paysanne, who came with his tractor to help the students.

"It's a bit late for potatoes, but it's symbolic, it's the ultimate nourishing plant," he smiled.

He came to support the students because, faced with "decisions that are completely anachronistic in relation to the ecological challenges of tomorrow, we can only mobilize," according to him.

"In Île-de-France, we are very, very little self-sufficient in terms of food," adds Simon, who is finishing his studies at AgroParisTech.

"It's not consistent, in fact, if we want to remain sovereign and self-sufficient in terms of food, to continue paving over the land," he adds.

For everyone present, the action of the day is "symbolic": only a small part of the space has been planted.

"I plan to stay at least this evening, after that we'll see," says Simon.