Benoît Cassan harvesting lavender in Simiane-la-Rotonde, France. His father, Alain Cassan, is a farmer and also the town’s mayor. France, fighting cheap exports from Eastern Europe and China, now accounts for only 50 percent of the world’s production of fine lavender.
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: July 21, 2006
SIMIANE-LA-ROTONDE, France, July 16 — July is harvest time in Lavenderland, so it is also the season of self-promotion.
A lavender purchase in Simiane-la-Rotonde. The town’s mayor said, “My goal is to build our economy around lavender’s essential oils.”
The tractors are rolling, the distillers steaming, the credit card machines registering.
Towns and villages throughout Provence have ginned up lavender festivals to attract and entertain the hordes of summer vacationers whose invasion is under way. Along an official “Lavender Route,” organized tours lead visitors through perfumed purple-blue fields, distilleries, museums, restaurants, art galleries and, of course, gift shops.
In Simiane-la-Rotonde (pop. 550), a sleepy hill town on the Lavender Route, the hard sell is more laid back.
For farmers here, the top priority is getting out the crop. A particularly cold winter and a dry spring have produced drier and smaller flowers throughout lavender country. That means, the farmers say, that the essential oil production derived from the crop could drop as much as 30 to 40 percent lower than last year.
“Lavender has been with us forever — sprigs of it were even found in the tombs of the pharaohs,” said Alain Cassan, a farmer who is also Simiane-la-Rotonde’s mayor. “It is the emblem of Provence, so we always have to fight back — and adapt.”
Mr. Cassan and his family cultivate more than 600 acres of both traditional or “true” lavender and lavendin, a sterile, hardier and much more prolific hybrid with a cruder, industrial, camphor scent.
His great-grandfather was among the first lavender middlemen in France, roaming the back roads on horseback and paying farmers for the lavender that grew wild in their dry, chalky fields; his grandfather was among the first generation in France to cultivate the plants as a commercial cash crop.
Until 3 most mornings these days, Mr. Cassan’s son Benoît runs two huge stills that transform the cut plants from their own and neighboring farms into essences that will infuse products as varied as body moisturizer and window spray.
The elder Mr. Cassan also has begun to promote lavender aromatherapy to help the town’s economy.
“My goal is to build our economy around lavender’s essential oils,” Mr. Cassan said, “to give conferences and seminars, to hand out prizes. This is how we are forging our way into the future.”
This month, the town is playing host to distillation workshops to educate and lure visitors to its medieval stone rotunda and the remains of its tiny chateau.
“Aromatherapy is not a science yet,” Jean-Noël Landel said as he demonstrated lavender distillation in the chateau’s makeshift laboratory. “Some people will tell you that the only worthwhile therapeutic lavender in the world is grown wild on the top of a certain hill where you pray for an hour before you cut it by hand. The science can’t support it.”
Still, Mr. Landel, a distiller and founder of the chateau’s laboratory, is eager to promote the benefits of the hardy, scented shrub.
He explained that lavender diffused in the air kills bacteria and molds. French psychiatrists, he added, have found that lavender-laden air can reduce agitation among certain psychiatric patients.
Lavender oil is said to disinfect small wounds and burns, relieve insomnia and rheumatic pain and repel flies and mosquitoes. The harsher-smelling oil from lavendin is used to boost the power of laundry soap and other cleaning products.
Despite the identification of Provence with lavender in the public imagination, France now accounts for only 50 percent of the world’s production of fine lavender, although 90 percent of its lavendin.
Starting in the 1960’s, lower-priced lavender products from Eastern Europe began penetrating the market. In recent years, cheap exports from China have further eroded the French market share.
The result has been lower prices for French farmers, particularly hard in a year when the crop is expected to be smaller.
In March, Daniel Spagnou, a deputy from the Alpes de Haute-Provence region, told the National Assembly that lavender farmers were enduring “an intense crisis” and demanded more aid. Last week, Agriculture Minister Dominique Bussereau met with farmers in the town of Bevons to express solidarity, but offered no new money.
Still, of all the agricultural sectors of France, lavender is one of the best organized and most resilient.
In 1979, Mr. Cassan created the country’s first cooperative of lavender growers to cut out the middlemen in distribution. It now has 325 members.
Two years later, “essential oil of lavender” was given the coveted designation A.O.C. (Appelation of Controlled Origin). To qualify, the lavender must be grown in one of four designated regions from seeds — not from cloned plants as is the case with most foreign and much French lavender. The altitude must be above 2,600 feet, and the distilling must not involve shredding. The oil also must pass an olfactory test.
Most important, in 1994, the French government fought back against the invasion of foreign lavender products with a major revival project. It financed the introduction of hardier strains, introduced new farm equipment for the rocky terrain, streamlined distillation methods and gave subsidies to individual farmers. Production rebounded.
Certainly French lavender is helped by its mystique. The Ministry of Agriculture’s perfume and medicinal plants agency says tourism in France with some sort of lavender connection brings in direct revenues of more than $50 million a year.
In Sault, for example, which plays host to the region’s biggest lavender festival each August, shops sell not only lavender bouquets and sachets, but also lavender-filled ceramic cicadas, lavender-scented candles, potholders with lavender designs and honey from the nectar of lavender-fed bees.
Restaurants throughout Provence offer lavender-inspired menus, with dishes like salads with lavender-laced vinaigrettes and lavender-sugared crème brûlée. Spas offer thermal baths and massages with lavender oil. A lavender farm in Cobonne offers classes in watercolor painting.
Perhaps the most intriguing salesmanship comes from an order of Catholic nuns. According to the “Lavender Route” guide, the lavender-growing Cooperative Nuns of Valensole invite tourists to visit “to revive your soul in silence and peace, reflection and prayer,” “to find yourself and give true meaning to your life.”
There is also a gift shop.
Maia de la Baume contributed reporting for this article.
Europe New York Times
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