If he had lived and had known whom they extolled in the pastoral ministry of Atharratze on 24 July, the memories of Edgard Pisan would bring him back to the Basque Country. In the LARRUN number dedicated to Johañe Pitrau (the leader of Zuberoa who woke up the mountain labourers), the two men, Minister Pisani and Pitrau, appear on the top of Mount Madalena in 1962.

Pisani was preparing the new French agricultural legislation, and at the meeting held in Pau, the young trade unionist from Atharratze loved it. On the proposal of the minister, Pitrau replied: “I’m willing to meet you, but not in a palace, come and see how mountain labourers live.” 54 years later, Pisani died a month before the Jean Pitrau Pastoral Premiere.

Mixel Berhokoirigoin honoured Laborari at the weekend: “Pisani, la disparition d’une grande figure”. Berhoko has thanked him that both he and the Basque Country Chamber of Agriculture were led in 2009 by the French state, which has shown them its public solidarity. He had previously shown his support for the baserritars of Iparralde, accepting to be the pattern of the fair Lurrama 2006.

The French press, entitled “Mort d’Edgard Pisani, résistant et ancien ministre de Gaulle et de Mitterrand”, has published the long monthly notes of Edgard Pisani and in Wikipedia has a detailed explanation. Born in Tunisia in 1918, he came to Paris as a young man and underwent higher education. He fought in the resistance against the Germans: In August 1944, he participated in the struggles to recover the prefecture of Paris, in French Paris brule-il? And in Spanish, Arde Paris? Pisani’s role in the film was that of Michel Piccoli.

After obtaining the post of sub-prefect before the end of the war, Miguel Strogoff would have taken up the highest levels of French authority throughout his career. Head of the Cabinet of the Minister of the Interior in 1946, then the prefect, head of the Defense Cabinet, member of the Superior Council of Spatial Planning, in 1953 he appeared as senator together with François Mitterrand, responsible in the following years for major dossiers such as nuclear energy...

In 1961 he was appointed Minister of Agriculture by Michel Debré and subsequently Minister of Housing and Equipment, he held the same position as George Pompidou. During all these years, as in France it is common to accumulate posts, he was still elected from one department or another, in some Members, in other senators, a senior official.

As a man of De Gaulle in politics for a long time, the left-wing Gaullist went to the Socialist Party in 1974, closer to Michel Rocard, recently deceased, than to Mitterrand: “Leaving Gaullism on the left I entered the Socialist Party on the right and ended up on the left of the PS… But I don’t think it has ever changed its place.” Since 1981 he was also elected to the Assembly of European Parliamentarians and soon Vice-President of the European Commission.

In 1984, the Canarian nationalists angered him to reconduct the situation in New Caledonia. He negotiated from the post of Minister with the historic leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou a formula called " trailers-association " that generated several polemics. Between 1988 and 1995 he was head of the Institute of Arab Worlds. After the withdrawal, Pisani was a member of the Economic and Social Council of France.

The food disregard of peoples

Berhokoirigoin explained in Laborari how important the 1960s agricultura.En saw the most important changes experienced by French and European farmers since the office of Minister Pisani. On the one hand, the citizens remembered the famine and the post-war rationing; on the other hand, the peasants demanded a dignified life and equated themselves with the other workers. In this context, the famous Common Agricultural Policy CAP emerged, which since the 1960s revolutionized the way of life and landscape of the rural areas of the Northern Basque Country.

In the CAP, measures were put in place to achieve an increase in agricultural production, a real objective: to guarantee prices regardless of the quantity produced, to monitor borders to protect European products and to give priority to the countries of the European Union in the case of individual imports.

In the 1960s, the entire land cultivation system was revolutionized, the farmhouses were mechanized, the professions were tecnificated, the selection of plants and animals was advanced. Husbandry of 30 to 50 hectares was needed, which guided the training of young farmers, land management, administrative structures, laws and standards. Minister Pisani sought the support of the leaders and young groups that emerged from the Christian movements to cope with the aged structures, which were the obstacle to change. So he found in the Basque Country Johañe Pitrau, a young farmer and activist, as a good interlocutor.

But when the golden age of growth of capitalist Europe began to run out, Berhokoirigoin says that we must be able to change when an agricultural policy that Pisani announced since the 1980s has achieved its objectives, that to continue in the same direction did not lead to overproduction, but to an increase in pollution and financial drowning.

Contrary to the liberalization of agricultural products, he claimed the food sovereignty of the peoples. When he spoke in Lurrama in 2006, the Gara newspaper picked up what the old Pisani said: “Of all the regions of France, Euskal Herria is the one that I have found the closest link between man and nature and between the rural environment and the city. (…) You believe what you do and say. Many agricultural organisations are merely pretending that they are doing something, without changing anything at its base. You do what you have said and say what you believe.”

Pisani recognized in Lurrama that he was not optimistic about the future of agriculture, that the dominant production systems today increase imbalances around the world, forcing farmers to leave the villages to look for jobs in the cities. Special emphasis was placed on the farmers of Asia and Africa who, in order not to starve to death, have no choice but to migrate to the cities: “This has to stop. These hungry people have been educated in reverence and obedience, but the day will come when they say: ‘That’s how we can’t go.’