When did the farm start ?

As the daughter of farmers, I started working on the family farm at age 17 because I had had enough of accounting courses. I married my husband Alain, also a farmer, when I was 19, and we moved to a 27-hectare farm, where we grew cereal crops and potatoes. Then in 1978, we developed a production of open ground endives on one hectare, which we used to sell at Rungis. The open ground endive is a top quality endive, crunchy and tasty, which demands considerable work that is often tiresome.  Briefly, it is cultivated in two cycles (sowing in open ground, transplanting and cultivation in the dark at 20°C) and to produce one hectare of open ground endive represents between 1 200 and 1 500 hours of work. This is difficult work that demands devotion and sacrifices to obtain a top-of-the-line product. The open ground endive is a Picardie flagship. Picardie is an ideally located, active region, offering rich, generous land.

How did the farm develop ?

In 1991, we created a company EARL Bled and the farm expanded to a hundred hectares. However, at the time, the open ground endive was having a tough time as it was “submerged” by the endive cultivated by hydroponics, a sort of “indoor” endive (forced in air-conditioned rooms using nutritious solutions) with a faster growth but lower quality. We were therefore forced to cut down our production area by a half-hectare. Then, a few years later the demand for open ground endives made a comeback with the advent of mad cow disease. Consumers were going back to healthy, natural, high quality products, which helped us develop our production, by marketing it through short channels. We also increased the size of the farm to 140 hectares in 1995. In 2002, the City of Amiens offered us a stand at their farmer’s market, reserved for producers selling directly to the public. We then developed a certain number of crops like asparagus, onions, turnips, leeks, carrots, lettuces, radishes, tomatoes, string beans, shallots, celery, parsnips, beetroot, etc. in addition to endives. At that time, the vegetable crops represented 2.5 hectares.  Our farm is currently segmented in the following way: 58 ha cereals, 14 ha rape, 12 ha high-protein peas, 16 ha seeds (grass), 20 ha potato for flour, 9 ha pasture (hay), 1 ha asparagus, 5 ha open ground endives, 3 ha vegetables, 1.5 ha potatoes for consumption (Annabelle, Mona Lisa varieties).
My son Adrien has rationalized the endive production by innovating at every stage (forcing, watering, extraction, snapping, cleaning) which has made the workload easier. Our average annual production is 70 tons.

Who are your clients ?

We sell all of our vegetables on the Amiens market, by Internet via fresh vegetable packets and at the farm. As regards the endives, the production follows these different channels in part, but over half goes through the semi-wholesale and wholesale channels (Rungis and Rouen). We wish to develop the business on wholesale markets, particularly at Rungis, where we have not been for about fifteen years.

How do you plan to develop ?

We are going to further develop our line of vegetables because there is strong demand from consumers in this sense, like spinach and cucurbits, which we are starting up. We have to offer products that others are not selling on the market.  We need to diversity and segment the production. If we develop our production potential (surface area and volume), new markets have to be found. As for open ground endives, this is a difficult market because it’s a niche product that is more expensive than ‘indoor’ endives, without counting the continued drop in consumption of endives.

What do you think of Rungis Market ?

Rungis is a wonderful showcase and a high quality market where we sell part of our open ground endive production. You meet good professionals here who promote the product perfectly. Rungis Market is helping us to develop and we are satisfied with it.