Faced with the aging of the profession, new oyster farmers are setting up and taking over in the Thau basin

Le renouvellement des générations est au cœur des enjeux de la filière conchylicole sur l’étang. Midi Libre – Archives

Le renouvellement générationnel est un enjeu majeur pour la filière puisque d’ici quelques années 50 % des conchyliculteurs en activité partiront à la retraite.

The figure speaks for itself. In the coming years, 50% of shellfish farmers in Occitanie and around the Thau lagoon will retire. According to Fabrice Grillon, director of the Regional Committee for Shellfish Farming in the Mediterranean (CRCM), this represents “around thirty departures per year”. On the port of Mourre Blanc in Mèze, signs indicating “Mas à vendre” clearly illustrate the phenomenon. In addition, of the 1,500 tables on the lagoon, a third are currently unoccupied.

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As in agriculture, generational renewal is a major issue for the profession, which has long relied on family transmission. Hence the CRCM's desire to “use all the resources” to find and support potential candidates for takeover. In this sense, it created the UITR (for installation and transmission unit) and training was simplified. There are four conditions required to become a shellfish farmer: be at least 18 years old, be French or European, be able to pilot a boat and have professional skills (several training courses allow this).

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A “passionate” job

Midi Libre went to meet these new (and future) oyster farmers, from the ranks or in reconversion, to understand their choice to launch into this “passionate” job, as they call it, and to follow the path of takeover, creation or expansion. While everyone is well aware of the difficulties facing the profession – high oyster mortality caused by vibrio, increased production costs, etc. – they remain nonetheless optimistic.

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“Certainly, productivity is no longer the same as before, but I have not known it, so I will work with today's issues, I will be forced to deal with them”, says Charles-Louis Angé, 37, in the process of taking over a farm based in Loupian. A new generation which, even if it will not necessarily compensate for the departures, does not lack desire and ambition.