Florent Hostalier no longer wanted to sell agricultural machinery and became a farmer “outside the family”

Florent Hostalier prend un soin tout particulier de ses bêtes. D. R.

Un rapport privilégié à la nature pour l'éleveur. D. R.

Florent Hostalier 28 ans, élève depuis deux ans 45 mères de races Aubrac et Ferrandaise sur 150 hectares à Bourgs-sur-Colagne en Lozère. En dépit des difficultés, il ne regrette pas son choix de vie. 

One in three farmers will retire within ten years. The survival of professions requires transmission which involves attractiveness. 

And above all, we must attract young people from outside the family context. This path, Florent Hostalier, 28 years old, has done it. Certainly, he comes from a family of breeders, pushed by his parents to pursue another profession, less hard, better paying. It will be a business school to be a salesman in agricultural machinery. "But I didn’have the fiber of a salesman", he remembers.

His passion remains breeding. He decided to return there after returning to studies, at the CFA in Laguiole and then on a work-study basis. He put his hands back in the soil, trained with several breeders then, two years ago, decided to take over the rental of Jean-Claude and Christian Castanier's farm in Aubrac, in Bourgs-sur-Colagne. 45 mothers of Aubrac and Ferrandaise breeds.

A successful (trans)mission

He has known the breeders for around ten years and the transmission takes place "smoothly. They continue to help me, keep watch, they are never very far away, it's difficult to let go, I understand them, but we know each other by heart". Florent also kept his job as a collection driver in a cooperative, three days a week "to have additional income".

He even plays football and takes a week's vacation a year. Florent is finally doing the job he loves and can even play football at a regional level.S&rsquo ;establishing outside the family framework, requires "to take the time to acquire experience, to look elsewhere, to discover different working methods, and above all, getting to know the people with whom you are settling in", explains Florent Hostalier. A successful (trans)mission in short.