An idea he puts up is that the government should use redirected CAP money to subsidise the organisation of direct supply of foodstuffs (local as possible, organic or other high-quality) for school and university meals, works canteens, retirement and nursing homes, hospitals -- the whole gamut of institutional meals -- so as to provide a large market and kickstart a much bigger chain of quality food production. I think this is a very interesting idea. One of the difficulties (and one of the reasons for the higher cost of) quality food production is the lack of large, well-organised distribution networks, beyond the all-too-well organised big supermarket chains, which boa-constrict the small producer.

I should stress that these are not so much his own ideas as those of environmentalists and agriculturalists he works with, like Pierre Rabhi and the environmental org Comité de Veille Ecologique. He's not working with the wrong people.

As for tactical voting, well... There's a parliamentary election to follow the presidential. By concluding an alliance, the Greens can have a group in the Assemblée Nationale. That does all the same guarantee a certain degree of influence. Secondly, Dany Cohn-Bendit does underline a real weakness in Hulot's strategy: what call can he make for the second round if (as is likely) both final candidates have signed his pact?

This is why I tend to think (like many others) that he doesn't really intend to go all the way, just put the pressure on the candidates and ensure that environmental issues are part of the campaign.

What if all of those jobs are near the family home? Employment and habitation hubs?

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

I have read that the yields of organic farming can be at or close to the level of industrial farming minus the latters' losses, but would have to dig up a reference.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

I'll take exception to one of your comments, though:

small scale organic farming? If so that means much higher prices and much more land taken away from nature.

This is a talking-point regularly circulated by the pro-industrial/productivist lobby. Don't you wonder why it is you don't hear it when the corn (maize) ethanol lobby proposes increasing acreage of corn? Then we hear that in fact there's heaps of land lying fallow that could be used... Organic farming is capable of higher yields and of lower unit costs the wider-spread and better-organised it is (I suggest to Sven above that the lack of a well-organised commercial network in a sizeable market is one of the reasons that hamstrings organic farming and keeps costs higher; secondly, as we have seen with petro-farming over the decades, the more the production chain is organized and given technical support, the greater the technical capacity of the farmers and the yields they obtain. That can be just as true of organic farming). Finally, no, as I explain to Sven, Hulot is not only speaking of organic farming. Just a switch from subsidising industrial farming to subsidising higher-quality, local, labour-intensive farming.

A 22-year study by Cornell that points to various benefits to organic cultivation of corn over the long term, and demonstrates equivalent yields in normal years and superior yields in drought years.

As far as the intensive/extensive farming debate goes, I think the example of Japan is interesting, as it has rather impressive yields despite what would be considered a very inefficient organization of agriculture -- lots of little farms, with lots of people working at them.

There are some interesting numbers on this point at the World Resources Institute on yields per hectare and whatnot.  Comparing the US, home of industrial mega-farming, and Japan, where I look out the window and see 90 year old grandmothers tilling the ground by hand, you can get some sense of the efficiencies possible with small-scale agriculture.

Japan, cereals    Average crop yield (kg per ha) 6147
US, cereals       Average crop yield (kg per ha) 5824

Japan, Ag. Workers as Percent of Pop, %7.3
US, Ag. Workers as Percent of Pop, %2.9

Now, these are average numbers, and I am sure there are more efficient farms elsewhere that balance out the little plots farmed by 90-year old grandmothers where I live.

Admittedly, Japan has a far higher per-hectare fertilizer usage rate.  The stats on this page are all fertilizer types combined.

Japan, fertilizer per hectare    295
US, fertilizer per hectare       111

But when I was studying Japanese history, I read that in the pre-industrial Edo period fish-meal fertilizers were a huge business, and used by most every farmer who had the means to do so.  So, I started to wonder what proportion of Japan's fertilizers were of the traditional type, but can't find data on that.

This data is sorta tangential to the discussion