“ To adapt to climate change, you need to eat cassoulet every day. » When he said these words at the conclusion of a conference of food start-ups, Richard Boucherie knew what he was talking about: beans, nutritious dried vegetables, are among the most resistant to drought. Same thing for old, so-called rustic vegetables: “Their yield is not enormous but constant, they know how to withstand a natural hazard, such as heatstroke, and grow without fertilizers, pesticides or irrigation,” he explains. Finding rare and forgotten vegetable plants has been precisely its mission since 2010 at the Hauts-de-France Regional Center for Genetic Resources for Regional Natural Areas (CRRG). This is also his legacy: “I was born into cauliflower and endive, my parents were vegetable producers in Steenwerck, in the North. »
