Aquino and Hollande: Never the twain shall meet

There are two very important issues that Mr. Aquino deliberately missed in his talks with President Francois Hollande: support for small-scale agriculture and the social safety net programs for the vulnerable. The “why” is easy to explain. The two are at the core of France’s reason for being. Here, they are non-issues, more so to the incumbent president .

France, a country with an economy that exports modern jets and a social fabric that feeds the world with the ideas of its public intellectuals, is a country like no other in the pampering of its small farmers and its small landholdings. If there is anything that is constant in the life of France, it is its love for the tillers of the soil. There is even a special French coinage for that love. Remember Jose Bove, the small farmer who almost single-handedly stopped the operations of a US fast-food giant in France. Small farmers, some 3% of the working population, get generous support domestically and get half of their support from European Union subsidies.