France is the European Union's main breadbasket, accounting for one-fifth of all agricultural output in the 27-country bloc. Yet half of its farmers are over 50 and set to retire in the coming decade, leaving nearly 160,000 farms up for grabs
Olivier Le Blainvaux, one of the founders, at Neofarm, an agro-ecological vegetable farm on a compact two-acre plot near Saint-Nom-la-Bretèche, France, on Sept. 28, 2021. Le Blainvaux believes it’s possible for boutique farmers to have better lifestyles. (Andrea Mantovani/The New York Times)
YVELINES, France — On a century-old farm that’s now a startup campus in this verdant region west of Paris, computer coders are learning to program crop-harvesting robots. Young urbanites planning vineyards or farms that will be guided by big data are honing their pitches to investors.
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