Before WWII, agriculture represented 35 percent of the active French population, and the superiority was self-sufficiency. Nowadays, agriculture has experienced notable changes.
Today, there are almost half a million farms in metropolitan France and 25 thousand in overseas territories. It represents a utilized agricultural area of nearly thirty million ha, more than 50% of the French area. This territory is split into three significant crops: 63 percent of cropland (cereal and forage crops mainly), 34 percent of grassland, and 3 percent of perennial crops, orchards, and vineyards. Despite a visible decrease, 30 percent of French farms are cattle farms.
