Adrien Pelletier

Adrien Pelletier, breeder and farmer, also works on the farm in agroforestry, milling and baking and a 100% organic producers’ store. At Ferme d’Orvilliers, with two partners, they now employ 15 people. The SELECT-Orvilliers 100% organic soft wheat breeding project is atypical and unique in France. It was born from the observation that it is difficult to make sourdough bread with modern organic wheat seeds but also that old varieties represent agronomic shortcomings (diseases, yield). Why does Adrien want to undertake a change of world in the most difficult place, his home, a large French region of industrial wheat production, mainly extractive? Imagine a sea of wheat, vast relatively flat fields and the absence of trees. He believes we are in the prehistoric era of organic farming, and that there is so much to discover, particularly around knowledge of soil functioning and agronomic interactions and cultivated plants, particularly with an orientation of organic farming towards regenerative organic farming practices. Part of the future surely lies in adapting our models of varietal creation for these cultivation systems?