France's wheat production
France is a leading producer of wheat, consistently ranking among the top five countries globally in wheat and cereal production. The country's fertile soils, temperate climate, and adequate rainfall create ideal conditions for agriculture, enabling France to utilize nearly 30 million hectares for farming, with over a third dedicated to cereals. Wheat cultivation is particularly significant, as it supports a variety of traditional French bread and pastry products, fundamental to the nation’s cuisine and culture.
In addition to wheat, France also cultivates other crops, including barley, corn, fruits, and vegetables, and is renowned for its wine production, making it one of the largest agricultural producers in Europe. The agricultural sector, while only contributing about 2 percent to the nation’s GDP, is steeped in tradition and continues to play a crucial role in French identity. Furthermore, the country's geographical advantages, including its favorable weather and diverse landscapes, allow for a broad array of agricultural practices, from northern triennial crop rotation to southern biennial methods.
Overall, France's agricultural landscape reflects a blend of historical significance and modern practices, underscoring its importance both locally and globally.
France's wheat production
France ranks regularly among the top five countries in the global production of wheat and other cereals, sugar beets, potatoes, and wine grapes because of its rich soils. France also exports significant amounts of vegetables, beef, and dairy products as well as some timber and fish.
The Country
France benefits from its geographic location between northern and southern Europe, possessing coastal openings on both the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The river systems of the Seine, Loire, Garonne, and Rhone favor interior communication, with only the Massif Central considered an internal natural obstacle. Although France has limited mineral resources, it has abundant fertile soils, receives ample rainfall, and has an equable climate. Historically, the nation has been known for its agricultural products.
After World War II, however, France industrialized rapidly under extensive governmental promotion of such development, and in the twenty-first century the French are recognized for their high-tech products in such areas as public transportation, defense, and power generation. Among European countries, France ranks the lowest in the material intensity measure of its gross domestic product (GDP)—at 0.7 kilogram per euro—which some researchers believe is a measure of technological and environmental efficiency but also reflects the service and agricultural orientation of France’s mixed economy.
In 2023, France had one of the largest GDPs in the world—measured in terms of purchasing power parity—at $3.764 trillion, with about 19 percent coming from the production of items such as machinery, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, metallurgical materials, aircraft, electronics, textiles, and beverages. A little less than 2 percent comes from agriculture (including wheat and other cereals, sugar beets, potatoes, and wine grapes), beef, dairy products, and fish. The global recession of 2008 slowed French GDP growth to 0.7 percent, with an estimated -8 percent in industrial production, but the country rebounded; in 2017 its GDP growth rate was 2.3 percent. France is one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations, attracting approximately 80 million foreign visitors in 2022. Nearly 70 percent of the country's GDP comes from services.
Minerals and Ores
The mining sector, which began declining in the 1990s, typically contributes a small percentage to the French GDP and employs less than 1 percent of the workforce. Metals are no longer mined in France, but the country still mines some minerals. In 2023, France produced 29.25 tons of indium; 1.89 million metric tons of gypsum and anhydrite; 400,000 metric tons of kaolin and kaolinitic clay; 16.41 million metric tons of hydraulic cement; and 400,000 metric tons of talc, among other minerals, many of which were not reliably tracked. France has also mined copper, gold, silver, powder tungsten, sponge zirconium, elemental bromine, ball and refractory clays, diatomite, lime, nitrogen, and iron pigments as well as thomas slag phosphates, (pozzolan and lapilli), and soda ash and sodium sulfate.
Phosphorous iron deposits found along the Moselle in Lorraine constitute the largest in Western Europe. They once produced 50 million metric tons per year but were increasingly hard to exploit profitably; the last mine was closed in 1998. Bauxite, discovered in the village of Les Baux in Provence, also was once mined extensively, but the deposits are nearly exhausted, and France ceased production in 1993. Similarly, potassium carbonate (potash), important in the production of fertilizer, once came abundantly from the mines of Alsace, but production was stopped because of ecological concerns and the depletion of the resource. During a decade of neoliberal policies, the government ceased subsidizing unprofitable operations. Mining production has varied widely over the years, with a decrease of 8.6 in October 2024 over the same month during the previous year. From 1991 to 2024, mining production in France averaged .
Fossil Fuels
As of 2022, France had coal reserves of 160 million metric tons. However, because of the poor quality of the coal and the effort needed to remove it, extraction has largely ceased. The major coal-mining operations in the Nord were closed in 1991, and the last mines in Lorraine and Provence were closed in 2004. France continued to import some coal for its steel industry and its small number of remaining coal-fired power stations. France planned to shut down the last four coal power plants at the end of 2024.
Hydrocarbon reserves, found in the regions of Aquitaine and Seine-et-Marne, also are limited. N deposits also are on the verge of exhaustion. In 2023, estimates indicated that France produced 80,000 barrels of oil a day, while was almost 1.55 million barrels a day. Clearly, the nation must import most of its needs, as crude oil reserved were about 61.719 million barrels per day in 2021. The multinational corporation Total is the world’s fourth largest company, with assets in Africa, Latin America, and the North Sea, and was formed in 1999-2000 by mergers of the French companies Total and Elf Aquitaine with Belgium’s Petrofina. Natural gas production has been declining steeply, going from 1.2 billion cubic meters in 2010 to 20.132 million cubic meters in 2022.
At one time, uranium, one of France’s principal energy sources, was extracted from mines at Bessines and La Crouzille (Limousin). Production in the 1990s was around 80,000 metric tons, or 3 percent, of the world’s uranium supply, but the last mine was closed in 2001. France still relies heavily on nuclear power production of electricity.
Energy
In 2022, France was the second-largest consumer of energy in Europe, after Germany, and is third to the United States and China in the production of nuclear energy. The nation has fifty-six reactors; France committed to reducing its nuclear power generation by 50 percent by 2025 but later abandoned this plan. In 2022, France announced plans to build six new reactors. As of 2022, nuclear power accounted for 62.5 percent of France's total energy production; renewables, mostly hydropower, accounted for 9.5 percent, and fossil fuels for 12.1 percent.
Nickel, Gold, and Other Resources in Overseas France
Mining contributes greatly to the economy of New Caledonia, a self-governing territory of France whose inhabitants are French citizens and vote in national elections. One-quarter of the world’s nickel resources are located on the islands; New Caledonia is also rich in cobalt and chromium. Nearby regions of the Pacific Ocean also promise significant nodules of polymetallic resources yet to be exploited. In 2007, mineral and exports, largely nickel and ferronickel, amounted to around $2 billion. However, has been heavily criticized as responsible for the loss of the unique natural heritage of the islands. Despite this, in 2024, France announced plans for a major lithium mining project. Lithium is used to manufacture batteries used in electric cars.
In French Guiana, an overseas department of France, gold deposits in jungle regions have attracted illegal mining, which poses a threat to ecologically sensitive areas and the indigenous Amerindian population. An estimated ten thousand illegal miners, known as garimpeiros, are destroying forest areas and polluting streams with mercury. The region also has petroleum, kaolin, niobium, tantalum, and clay.
Soil and Agricultural Production
In France, agriculture has always figured prominently in economic development because of the country’s temperate climate, good soils, and ample rainfall. France had the largest utilized agricultural acreage of any European country as of 2024—nearly 30 million hectares, more than half of the country's area. In 2000, the “World Soil Resources Report” of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations ranked France as having the fewest constraints on agriculture in Western Europe because of its soil quality, placing it fifteenth in the world in the agricultural potential of its soils (referred to by the French as “green oil”). Farms in France are much larger and fewer in number than in the past and have shifted increasingly to intensive, mechanized cultivation techniques. This has, in turn, provoked heated criticism from French food and agricultural activists. Around 2.6 percent of the French labor force was involved in agriculture as of 2022.
France is divided into vast cleared areas suitable for farming or animal husbandry that are separated by heaths, moors, and extensive forest areas. France is well known as a mosaic of different regional features arising in part from differences in geology, morphology, climate, soil, and vegetation as well as different human cultural responses to habitats. The agriculturally rich low plains of Beauce, Seine-et-Marne, and Picardy were created by and sedimentation on the seabed during the Mesozoic era and Tertiary period. Fertile alluvial plains are also found along the Seine and Loire rivers. Southern France is distinguished by biennial rotation of crops, while northern France is characterized by triennial rotation, and cultivation also can be categorized into open or enclosed fields; the latter are typical in western France and are known as bocage (hedged farmland). France has the widest range of latitude of any European nation, enjoying some of the subtropical of the Mediterranean as well as the temperate climate of northwestern Europe. This allows for a wide variety of crops. France usually suffers from few of the extremes—cold or drought—that affect both northern and southern Europe. On average, almost the entire country receives at least 50 centimeters of precipitation as either rain or snow.
More than a third of France's farmland is devoted to cereals, primarily wheat. Some barley and corn is also grown; the corn mainly goes to feed animals. The country also grows fruit, producing 8.9 million tons in 2020, and vegetables, producing 4.4 million tons that year (excluding potatoes). The main fruits grown are apples, followed by nuts, while potatoes, carrots, and tomatoes are the main vegetables. France is also, famously, a producer of wine, to which 1.9 million acres of the country's farmland are devoted. About 45 million hectoliters of wine were produced in 2022.
Although France is popularly known for its extensive cereal production, which includes its famous bread and pastry products, and its vineyards and wines, it produces large quantities of meat as well. It is the top producer of cow meat in Europe and the third-largest producer of pig meat. France is also a producer of dairy products, notably milk, cheese, and butter. Winston Churchill declared famously upon the occasion of the German invasion of France in 1940, “A country producing almost 360 different types of cheese cannot die.” Finally, it should be noted that France is the top European producer of oysters and among the top three in mussels, fishing, and aquaculture, which includes freshwater trout, bass, and bream from marine farms.
Forests and Forest Resources
Forests are France’s richest natural resource, with one-quarter of the land covered by forest, amounting to 13.8 million hectares. One-quarter of this land is managed by the National Forests Office, whose efforts led to the doubling of forest areas during the twentieth century. Forest areas are concentrated in the east, south, and southwest, the largest of which is the Landes coastal region south of Bordeaux. France’s forests are made up of 63 percent deciduous and 38 percent coniferous or mixed trees; another 8 percent are considered brushwood. France imports softwoods and pulp largely for paper production, but is one of Europe's biggest producers of wood pellets. While no longer the biggest producer of sawn hardwood in Europe, France remained one of the top producers in 2022.
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