Dive your eyes in a cauliflower head and discover the infinity … Others have done it before you. Like the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot who was pale, not in front of the pommers, but in front of those with “a rough surface and rich in invariances”, in his own words.
This vegetable offers, in fact, an example of a fractal structure, designer with a master’s hand by Lady Nature. Its geometry is therefore similar to all observation scales. Hang on to the leaves so as not to be dizzy. When you cut the cauliflower, you get bouquets, which themselves are subdivided into flowers and so on. And the drawing remains identical. What a story ! Cauliflower Tale Fleurette…
However, on the stalls, the cauliflower does not have the big head. He even plays a low profile during holiday season. But hopes well, if the cold returns, regaining its place on the plates, in the form of soups or gratins. The market gardeners, on the other hand, rub their hands. “For the moment the prices are correct,” admits Marc Kerangueven, president of Prince of Brittany, and himself producer of vegetables of full field in Lannilis in Finistère.
Relief after a very complicated 2021-2022 campaign. From January 2022, prices tumbled up and even ratified by 50 % in March and April, before finishing in crisis in May. Then, in summer, during plantations for the new campaign, heat and drought hit France without sparing Brittany.
New expectations
“It is very rare that mercury exceeds 35 ° C in Brittany. There have been loss of yield, smaller calibers. But the cauliflower is resistant, and, with the fall rains, The quality has returned, “explains Mr. Kerangueven. Result, the Ministry of Agriculture is now counting on a production 2022-2033 up 8 % to 227,000 tonnes.
However, even in his Breton stronghold, the heads of cauliflowers have lost ground over the years. “In the 1970s, three products, cauliflower, artichoke and potato, represented 90 % of the turnover of Prince of Brittany. Today, that only represents 30 %, and the The best -selling vegetable is the tomato, “says Kerangueven. He specifies that the production of cauliflowers has been reduced by twenty years. However, this vegetable which does not support frost exports to Germany and to Great Britain, and is one of the few to contribute to the French trade balance.
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