Come for the nougat fights, if not the cows
Even in a boring year, the Salon de l’agriculture is anything but boring.
A gentle farmyard whiff has been floating over the Porte de Versailles since Saturday. Yes, it’s that time of the year again: the Salon de l’agriculture is back. And it’s already featured a punch-up at a nougat stand.
If you’re unfamiliar with Paris’s annual celebration of French agriculture, here’s a brief summary. The Salon de l’agriculture is, first and foremost, an excellent day out. More than a thousand stands groaning with ripe fruit and oozing cheeses, many of them offering free samples. As David Lebovitz put it, “You can taste the best of the entire country in one giant hall.” If you’re someone who enjoys having intense conversations with your local caviste about the flavour profile of your bottle of wine and precisely how that was achieved, you will have the time of your life.
Secondly: if you are a politician, the Salon de l’agriculture is where you are photographed standing next to a cow.
Sure, agriculture contributes less than 2% of French GDP these days, but don’t underestimate the immense power of the French farming lobby. Standing next to a cow is proof that even if you buy your suits at Jonas & Cie, you are deeply in touch with rural issues. I learned from The Local’s excellent Talking France podcast this week that Emmanuel Macron currently holds the record for the length of time spent at the Salon de l’agriculture by any politician: 14 hours and 40 minutes.
Finally, the Salon is a place for Parisians to briefly commune with their peasant ancestors and show their nature-starved children an animal that isn’t a poodle or a pigeon. There’s a nice observation in Simon Kuper’s Impossible City: Paris in the Twenty-First Century about how Parisians often like to define themselves as being “from” some provincial corner of France, even if the link doesn’t go much further than “a grandfather [having] spent a couple of years there as a young man”. It’s a caricature, of course, but there is a strange tendency for Parisians to think of themselves as belonging elsewhere, even if they were born here. Even if less than a fifth of the population lives in the countryside, even if more and more farmers’ kids are reluctant to take up family businesses that operate in increasingly dire conditions, France is still the EU’s biggest agricultural producer. Fundamentally, many French people still think of their country as having a rural identity.
And if reconnecting with a rural identity is a big part of it, that may explain why many Parisians are shunning the Salon this year: there are no cows. Normally livestock farmers bring hundreds of long-eyelashed beauties to battle it out for various prizes. This year, due to the recent spread of an unpleasant affliction called lumpy skin disease, organisers opted for a bovine ban. It’s the first time in the Salon’s more-than-sixty-year history that it’s been cow-free; they’re usually a big, stinky, mooing presence in this cavernous expo centre. “Clearly, a Salon without cows, it feels like it’s missing something,” a forlorn Arnaud Lemoine, the event’s director, told the media. The absence of cows is widely assumed to be the main reason for a 25% plunge in visitors in the first four days compared to 2025, although it also doesn’t help that this year’s Salon coincides with school holidays that have taken many Parisian kids away to their “real” homelands.
Never a dull moment
You can still see sheep, pigs, goats, horses, donkeys, rabbits, cats and dogs if you go – but really, who needs those when you can watch the humans behaving like animals? On Sunday, a massive punch-up broke out after some drunk Salon-goers spat on the sweets for sale at a nougat stand. The massive sword you see being waved around in this video is apparently a nougat knife:
Fifteen people were arrested, of whom four are set to go on trial.
Perhaps even more captivating than the nougat punch-up is the completely separate legal fight now brewing at the Salon over, yes, nougat.
It turns out that the sweet stand at the heart of the fracas was selling its wares under the brand name Nougat d’antan, or ‘nougat from yesteryear’. Which has prompted Le Chaudron d’Or, a rival nougat vendor, to point out: hang on a minute, don’t we own that trademark?
“We own this brand!” Charlène Morent, Le Chaudron d’Or’s co-owner, told Ici Radio. “We’re finding ourselves associated with these acts of delinquency. It’s a double pain: they’ve stolen our name and they’ve destroyed our reputation.”
I’m not sure how many people will have even made the connection, but to dispel any doubt: Charlène’s nougat is not the nougat involved in the nougat brawl, ok? And let it be known to Millefeuille’s readers: There is only one nougat d’antan.
Charlène’s husband, and the company’s co-owner, is the mayor of their southern hometown of Montélimar – which, I now know, is the nougat capital of France. A big dog in the cutthroat nougat world, it would seem. And he and his wife are now launching complaints with both the anti-fraud agency and the agency that deals with protected geographical foodstuffs.
I feel a little sorry for the nougat stand involved in the brawl. First the punch-up, now a legal dispute that would probably never have happened if it wasn’t for said punch-up. They’re probably looking forward to putting this year’s Salon behind them. Bring on next year – maybe with some returning cows.
The Salon de l’agriculture runs until Sunday, so get your tickets quick. If you go, post your cheese tips below.
À la semaine prochaine,
Katy
The Salon is a lot to take in. (Pro tip: The Portuguese stands that have charcuteries and hams are vastly underrated due to no marketing budget, and ignored.) Too bad about the nougat fight. They used to let people come and drink all the leftover wine on the last afternoon of the Salon but soooo many people were getting hammered, they had to stop.
Wow, he really whacks that guy with a plank of wood in the video; great stuff.
This does highlight the real reason many love going to the Salon -- getting absolutely shitfaced while "tasting" nice wine from lunch onwards on a weekday