Jean Francois Martin, Avaux, France

I met Jean Francois when i was on holiday in the Morvan. A beautiful part of France with rolling hills, big Chestnut and oak forests and quite a lot of small farms.

He invited me into his house, or better the one room he was living in, since 2010 when 159 of his cattle where culled because of an infectious disease.. ( that same year his brother with whom he ran the farm, died of cancer ) According to him, he never got a financial compensation for the culling of his cattle and lives in total poverty now.

He has no electricity ( the one lamp in the room gets power from a battery bank a neighbor charges for him every few days), one tap with only cold water, no other way of warming up his room than the woodstove on which he also cooks his meals ( but he has to collect the wood for the fire in the surrounding forests which gets more difficult every day ... he was 74 when i met him in october 2023)

I certainly don't now know the whole story,

there might be more to it than what he told me, but what i do know is that it is chocking and unacceptable that people have to live in those circumstances these days in a European country..