After a career at Nature & Découvertes, Charles Monville sells organic poultry directly in Bièvres, in Essonne.
“At the beginning of the 2000s, I became regional director at Nature & Découvertes and I no longer had any prospects for advancement,” recalls Charles Monville. From my childhood spent 15 km from Rouen, I kept the memory of the pleasure of being outside, of the eggs and milk that I went to get from neighboring farms, of games with farmers’ children. At the same time as I was thinking about my future, a childhood friend set up outside the family, in organic chicken in the Gers. He had started, it worked, so why not me? »
Charles Monville has a taste for business, relationships with customers and an attraction to breeding. “That of chickens required a smaller investment for fairly rapid profitability,” he observed. After discussing his project with his wife and after several stays with his friend to “check that he liked this job”, the decision was made. In 2006 and 2007, he took training leave to take a BPREA. He left Nature & Découvertes in September 2007 and sought to settle in Touraine where his in-laws had a house.
4 hectares ceded by neighbors
“We had given up on Île-de-France where there was no land available,” he remembers. While waiting to find a farm, in June 2008 he signed a lease with his in-laws who own land near Tours. In the fall, he delivered his first chickens to Amap (1) in the Ile-de-France region because his wife always lived and worked near the Saclay plateau.
“During the second distribution, a couple of farmers from the plateau, Cristiana and Emmanuel Vandame, offered to give me the 4 hectares that I was looking for. I will be forever grateful to them. The Region which owns it agrees. In 2009, everything came together. I am submitting the building permit for a building, a residential house, a path that crosses my poultry ranges. I’m moving my two chicken huts from Touraine, and I’m building two others. In February 2010, I received my first chicks in Bièvres. »
Looking back, Charles has no regrets about having first ventured into Touraine. “This gave credibility to my project to then find land on the plateau. »
More than 100 days of aging
Today, nine mobile cabins and their paths sit on the plot: six for the broilers, one for the capons, one for the chickens and one for the 249 layers. Are produced and sold over the year: 150 capons after six months of breeding and 150 chickens of 4.5 months for Christmas, and 5,000 broilers at 105 days, 112 days and 118 days. “Organic specifications require 81 days of aging, but to obtain the best quality flesh, you have to exceed 100 days,” estimates Charles.
To feed the poultry every two days, three organic farms on the Saclay plateau provide 45 t/year of triticale, the same amount of corn and 6 t/year of fava beans. His poultry manure goes to the Vandame couple to fertilize their crops. For this rigorous and organized man, the week is well-paced: “On Monday evening, I catch the poultry ordered to slaughter them on Tuesday morning with my paid team. On Wednesday morning, I cut and package the chickens before selling them at the farm on Thursday afternoon. The advantage on the Saclay plateau is that there is no shortage of customers. So they adapt to my pace. »
“I like to talk with people and when I explain my constraints to them, they understand,” continues Charles Monville. On the other hand, during school holidays, there is no one there. So I stop selling for seven weeks in the summer. Which allows me to go on vacation for three consecutive weeks. » At 53, Charles says he is ready to pass on his production tools if an opportunity presents itself. “It’s physical work that I don’t see myself doing until I’m 64,” he concedes.
Florence Melix
(1) Associations for the maintenance of peasant agriculture.
