Seeds of Change

SINCE I returned to Paris two years ago, the Olympics have been a regular subject of conversation. The French, you may be surprised to hear, have had many opinions about the whole thing. Mostly I heard concerns about what a mess it all was, or at least would be. There was a strong conviction that it would be an absolute disaster (one that the Parisians, at least, would be spared: the Games fell during their sacrosanct summer holidays, so they wouldn’t be there.)

I felt the tone shift as soon as the opening ceremony happened. It was such a fantastic spectacle, and one that was so absolutely, quintessentially French, that it won over even the doubters. (I particularly loved the bloody Marie Antoinette tableau set to death metal). The positive vibes only grew from there, until one could detect a note of a very un-French emotion: enthusiasm.

Like the other Parisians, my family fled for the south – in our case, Biarritz, where we had arranged a home exchange with a family who wanted to brave the city during the Games. Their Whatsapp messages to us grew more and more effusive as the weeks unrolled, ending in a final exclamation of how proud the Olympics had made them feel to be French, a feeling they declared to be entirely unfamiliar. (My seven-year-old might have been skeptical of this declaration. Aside from me, she is the only member of my family fluent in French, which meant she could understand the announcers as we watched the Games. After a few days of listening to their effusiveness when their countrymen won — we heard more than one break down in tears — she declared, “The French really love themselves.”) 

Along with using the Seine as the stage for the opening ceremony, and turning the city itself into a stadium to host the events, there was another decision whose audaciousness could have been missed by those unfamiliar with Paris and its environs: building the Olympic Village in Seine-Saint Denis. The départment just north of the capital is a post-industrial area that for many years has suffered extreme economic depression and boasted the highest crime rate in France; it would be as if New York hosted the Olympics and chose to house athletes in the South Bronx.

I don’t know Saint-Denis at all. I take the train through it on my way to the airport, I remember the (now classic) movie La Haine, and I was living in Paris in 2005 when riots erupted there, lasting for several weeks. But since moving back to France, I have taken note of the push being made to expand Paris’ borders to enlarge the city, and part of that has been what seems to be sincere efforts to revitalize Saint-Denis. The Olympic village was a part of those efforts, one that makes me appreciate the French for putting their money where their mouth is. But it’s not the only one, and a few weeks ago I took the metro to see another, more local effort. 

The last stop on line 13 isn’t far from the center of  Paris, but you get off the train in a different world. Gone are the beautiful Haussmann boulevards; here the housing stock is mid-century towers that were already charmless when they were built and haven’t aged well. But after walking a few long, fairly bleak blocks from the metro, you come to the gates of something very different again: a farm. 

The Parti Poétic is an artistic collective whose ethos is “nature, culture, nourriture,” which translates to “nature, culture, and food.” Culture, as they define it, is both nutritional and intellectual. Since 2017, Parti Poetic has operated the Zone Sensible, a one-hectare farm, on this former industrial site. The “artistic garden” is an ecological oasis set in the middle of a decidedly urban place, which weaves together the strands of the organization’s mission. Its artistic and cultural program brings in artists whose work deals with questions of ecology, tapping them to create activiations designed to raise neighborhood engagement with the green space. Programs are offered for children, adults and families to educate around healthy eating, and kitchen gardening. And Zone Sensible is also a fully operational, permaculture farm, using regenerative farming to clean the pollution from the soil and grow organic produce. Its first product was honey, but now it also produces vegetables, herbs and flowers. 70% of its yield is donated to the local community to support food diversity, with the remaining 30% sold to high-end restaurants in Paris.

On the day I visited, it was with Amaury Bouhours, the Executive Chef at Le Meurice Alain Ducasse (which has two Michelin stars). Zone Sensible is one the suppliers he works with; his restaurant receives a weekly delivery of produce, mostly herbs and edible flowers so fresh they have never seen the inside of a refrigerator. Twice a year, he brings his whole team to the farm to educate them on their mission. While there, they all harvest aromatics which are dehydrated and ground into rubs for smoking meat, and turned into floral vinegars. 

Coming back to Paris on August 12 felt like showing up at 6 am the night after a big party. The streets were empty, the city sighing as it settled into some well-earned rest. Because the Parisians were so busy worrying about what could go wrong with the Olympics (a personality trait that I am sorry to say I can identify with), they may not have spent enough time imagining what could go right. But some of the layers of what can go right still remain to be seen, such as how the wager to revitalize the banlieues will pay off. What’s sure is that the investment in the banlieues is an investment in Paris as a whole. All boats rise with the tide. 

While I was visiting Zone Sensible, I was told that, though the relationship between Le Meurice, one of Paris’ grandest hotels, and its banlieue maraîchers, might seem unexpected, it’s not just symbiotic, but also historic. In the early 20th century, when Parisian restaurants were serviced by daily deliveries of produce from area farmers, the farmers never returned home with empty carts. After dropping the produce, they loaded back up with food scraps to add to their compost piles, and cinders to spread across their fields to nourish them — which is exactly what Zone Sensible still does. The cinders from the meat that has been rubbed with the herbs grown on the farm end up back on the farm, where they are spread across the soil by people from the neighborhood who have come as visitors and stayed as volunteers. Ashes to ashes, they make sure the remnants of food are used to nourish the soil, and grow the next crop.