Come back down to earth with Terre de Liens

French NGO Terre de Liens is celebrating 20 years of agricultural preservation with an awareness campaign whose release coincides with a national discussion over a new law which will have a major impact on the country’s future of farming and set a precedent for other European countries.

The project, known as PLOAA (Pacte et une loi d’orientation et d’avenir Agricole), is set to establish an agreement and law on how to meet the challenges of food sovereignty and generational renewal in agriculture and how to help the sector adapt to agro-ecological and climate change. The discussion also focuses on making agriculture more appealing as a career path, training and providing assistance for beginning farmers, and facilitating the succession of farmland to combat industrialisation. This month, a working group organised by the government is set to present its much-anticipated findings on ways to do so.

The organisation’s Come Back Down to Earth campaign, created with agency STRIKE, features a 90” animated film that invites audiences to return to Earth and encourages a renewed appreciation for farmers and the resources they provide.

In France, nearly 200 farms disappear every week and 50,000 hectares of farmland are paved over every year. Worse still, [1 in 3 farmers] will retire in the next 10 years, with no one to replace them.

The stakes for the new law are high and critics say the current text falls short of meeting the urgent needs of the agriculture sector, not doing enough to help a new generation of farmers by making agricultural land more accessible for sustainable projects, or to limit the scale and impact of climate change, to stop the decline in biodiversity, or to relocalise food.

For 20 years, the foundation Terre de Liens has been working to end land speculation and promoting generational renewal. In just two decades the association has rescued more than 300 farms and helped 700 farmers set up, and today is supported by thousands of donors.

Come Back Down to Earth invites us to question our relationship with farmers and agriculture. The conquest of space, the conquest of the metaverse, robotics... today, our planet’s greatest fortunes seem to be more disconnected than ever from social and environmental reality. Industrialisation is gradually replacing farming, just as the virtual is gradually replacing the real, and the artificial is replacing taste. The film denounces this prospective and reminds us that we need to invest in agriculture for a better tomorrow.