France is Europe’s largest agricultural producer, accounting for around 18 per cent of the European Union’s total agricultural output. Worryingly, half of France’s farmers are set to exit farming by 2030.Similarly, in India, where about 60 per cent of the arable land is used for agriculture, the youth are leaving agriculture for cities.According to the 2017 Annual Status of Education Report conducted by Pratham, only 1.2 per cent of 30,000 rural youth surveyed aspired to be farmers. From a land-area perspective, France’s agricultural land amounts to 109,256 square miles; India’s is more than six times larger. Both countries therefore face a shared challenge: how do they ensure generational renewal in agriculture and what does this mean for their respective notions of sovereignty?While inaugurating the National Dialogue on “Indian Agriculture Towards 2030” in 2021, former Vice President of India, Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu called for measures to prevent the agro-brain drain and attract educated youth to take up farming as a profession.Generational renewalThe issue of generational renewal of agriculture facing France and India is not only one of production or supply. It is also a question of control: who decides what agricultural commodities are grown, how these are grown and on what terms. It is useful to distinguish food security from agricultural sovereignty.Food security is about reliable access to sufficient, safe and affordable food; agricultural sovereignty is about a country’s ability to control the inputs, institutions and decisions that shape its agricultural future. In economic terms, the latter is the ability of a nation to control its core production inputs, pricing exposure and long-term soil capital without structural external dependency.Agricultural sovereignty, more recently known as food sovereignty, was first coined in 1996 by members of Via Campesina, an international farmers’ organisation, and later adopted by several international organisations, including the World Bank and the United Nations. Its most recent incarnation rests on six principles – right to food for people, valuing food providers, localising food systems, putting control locally, building knowledge and skills and working with nature, food sovereignty defends the interests and inclusion of the next generation in agriculture.Food sovereigntyRecognising the need for placing food sovereignty at the heart of the political priorities of French agricultural laws, in 2024 France proposed a draft Orientation law on ‘agricultural sovereignty and generational renewal in agriculture’.This law explicitly links sovereignty to training, EU co-financing, fosters education across agriculture, encourages environmental practices, and invests in human resources in keeping with Europe’s aim to double the share of young and new farmers by 2040.India had its own expression of the food sovereignty movement during recent farm law protests against three farm laws passed by the Central Government in which farmers demanded control over markets, inputs and land.The three laws, primarily marketing reforms, were aimed at deregulating food price control, liberalizing the control of food stocks and trade, and giving private enterprise more freedom to contract with farmers directly.Price supportOne fear of the farmers was that the minimum support price would get dismantled leaving farmers to bargain directly with a few large corporations.The farmer protests to retain market, input and seed control in India stand in sharp contrast to France’s top-down model of generational renewal, where state policy and explicit financial support, plays an important role in driving entry and retention in farming.France’s experienceIn France the State lowers financial and bureaucratic barriers for young farmers, as many leave agriculture early due to costs and low incomes. In India, generational renewal as a policy is less explicit, left vulnerable to the needs of small and marginal landholders, high debt, small landholdings, and rural-urban migration.France uses the EU’s CAP Strategic Plan, which includes direct payments, eco-schemes and transition support for sustainable farming and generational renewal India’s main tools for agriculture, which includes the Minimum Support Price, input subsidies, PM-KISAN, the Kisan Credit Card scheme, crop insurance, soil-health and irrigation schemes, and market reforms, amongst others. These are major schemes aimed at enhancing productivity, income support and sustainable practices, but with little direct relevance tackling the issue of generational renewal in agriculture.France’s model shows how legislation and finance can institutionalize generational renewal.The path forward lies in a purposeful synthesis: Indian policy could integrate France’s institutional tools – youth-support schemes, land-access instruments and targeted credit – while France could adopt India’s low-cost agro-ecological community led models that give importance to smallholders and seed sovereignty.Only by combining state capacity with a sensitivity to movement-driven demands can both countries ensure that the next generation of farmers not only enters agriculture, but does so in terms that are economically viable, ecologically sustainable and politically empowering.The writer teaches French at the Alliance française de DelhiPublished on July 3, 2026