Agricultural education in France: addressing current challenges

Before the challenges of food sovereignty, support for transitions, particularly agro-ecological transitions, and meeting the needs of professionals and regions, French agricultural education “provides answers with its great capacity to adapt to change”. This is what the Portrait de l’enseignement agricole (Portrait of agricultural education) aims to demonstrate. In addition to key figures, it presents stories from students and teachers to illustrate the excellence of this field of training in France.

Remarkable professional integration

As the French Minister of Agriculture and Food writes in his preface, “in addition to the guarantee of attending a training course of excellence, choosing agricultural education is a guarantee of future employment in a wide range of sectors that are recruiting every year”. Thus, the higher the level of degree, the better the professional integration. Higher-level training courses include engineering, veterinary and landscape design degrees and State doctorates, all of which enable them to “respond to current problems such as sustainable food, territorial development, animal health and welfare and landscape maintenance”.

In detail, 80% of the engineers who entered working life are in employment six months after leaving the school and this rate reaches 92% one year after leaving the school. As far as veterinarians are concerned, almost all of them are employed one year after leaving the school. As for the professional integration of landscape designers, it is generally characterised by a higher rate of entrepreneurship in the landscape design and development sector.

Opening up to the international market

Agricultural education trains “future professionals who are open to Europe and the world and aware of international issues”, thanks in particular to some one hundred international cooperation partnerships. More formally, 28 European and International networks of agricultural education have also been set up, covering some sixty countries, which, even during the pandemic, have maintained “their partnerships by alternative means that are conducive to reflection on sustainable cooperation”.

Even though the mobility dynamic of agricultural education may have been impacted by the health crisis, over 5,000 international students have been welcomed in agricultural institutions. Similarly, the 1,052 Erasmus+ projects carried out by agricultural institutions between 2014 and 2020 have enabled establishments to “take hold of the new Erasmus+ 2021-2027 programme and its priority themes: inclusion, ecological transition, digital transformation and learning about European citizenship”.

Research and development players

Agricultural institutions have become key players in all areas of research and are now essential actors of development.

Agricultural education is present in all agricultural and agri-food development, experimentation and innovation activities.

In collaboration with national research organisations and universities, agricultural, veterinary and landscape higher education institutions conduct research work in various sectors such as sustainable resource management, adaptation to climate change, the search for social, economic and environmental performance, the fight against new infectious diseases and food safety and quality control. Research made in such institutions rely on about one hundred joint research units, under the joint responsibility of an agricultural higher education institutions and partners such as the National Institute for Agricultural and Environmental Research (INRAE in French), the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM).

Leading institutions

To support and bring value to the agriculture and food of tomorrow, the “higher agricultural education system must adapt”. This is the conclusion drawn by the Ministry of Agriculture, which highlights two complementary bodies under the supervision of the Ministry of Agriculture, members of the Campus France Forum, which are intended to structure this education in France:

• a leading institution in life sciences and environmental industries, AgroParisTech, a member of a top-ranking international university, the University of Paris-Saclay;
• an institution at the spearhead of agriculture, food and environmental issues, the Institut Agro, made up of schools located throughout France and strongly rooted in the regions, in connection with the sectors.

Note that Campus France offers a detailed information sheet on training in agriculture and agronomy which gives an overview of the types of training offered in France in these fields (Licence, Master and Post-Master levels).