Feature: Lavender revival in Provence

SIMIANE-LA-ROTONDE, France, Aug. 29 (UPI) -- Here and there in the highest plateaus of Haute-Provence, the scent of heady lavender still mixes with sun-baked pine, as tractors slice through last of the season's purple flowers.

But the harvest is over at the sprawling farm of Alain Cassan, in the rolling hills of southeastern France. Trailers are stacked high with neatly tied bunches of lavender. In the coming weeks, they will be dried, packed and shipped to dealers in 45-pound burlap bags. The journey ends at trendy boutiques in New York or Paris, where the flowers are sold as dried bouquets or in perfumed sachets.

It's been a middling year for Provencal lavender farmers -- unseasonable hail and a dry spell sealed their yields. But Cassan, for one, can't complain.

Just a decade ago, when France's lavender industry was perilously close to extinction, the stocky French farmer contemplated being the last to practice his family's century-old profession. Today, son Benoit has returned to farming, and the Cassans' operation has expanded.

"You take away lavender farming, and it's finished for us," said Cassan, 58. "If they didn't have this revival plan, I'm not sure we'd be talking about lavender today."

Launched in 1994 by the French government, the plan in question aims to save Provence's cherished lavender heritage, partly by introducing sturdier, more prolific varieties, partly by tailoring farming equipment to suit the region's parched, rocky soil. Short-term subsidies lured some lavender growers to increase their production, and others to return to their farms.

"More than its interest as a crop, lavender is key to rural life in Provence," said Patrice de Laurens, director of ONIPPAM, a government office specializing in aromatic and medicinal plants, and overseeing the lavender revival plan. "In the zones where lavender grows, there is no other agricultural substitute, except a little wheat farming. And that would demand a huge amount of financial assistance."

More modest government assistance for lavender, which ended last year, has reaped stunning results. Over the past decade, lavender production in Provence -- the only French region that cultivates the plant -- has doubled, to about 65 tons a year.

Provence-based companies, like the international chain of L'Occitane beauty stores, are capitalizing on their local roots. Others, like Colgate and Procter & Gamble, have signed exclusive contracts with Provence lavender dealers.

"We have to keep this image that we are from Provence," said Bruno Lalande, managing director of H. Reynaud & Sons, France's biggest dealer of lavender and lavendin, which is based in Provence. "It's good business. And also, it is a way of life."

Today, France has regained its seat as lavender king, after years trailing rival Bulgaria and Ukraine. Today, Provence generates roughly 65 percent of the world's essential lavender oil, used in soaps, creams and perfumes, and 90 percent of oil of lavendin, a coarser but more prolific variety. And if the French revival plan failed to reverse a massive rural exodus, industry officials contend, at least, it braked the decline.

Indeed, France's lavender renaissance offers a rare bright spot in a largely bleak agricultural forecast. In 12 years, a third of French farmers have gone out of business, according to a February study by the French research institute, CREDOC. The roughly two million who remain represent just 3.5 percent of the population, down from 12 percent in 1970.

Adding to farmers' woes are new proposals to drastically overhaul generous European Union agricultural subsidies. France has long been the top recipient of aid that critics contend generates overproduction and inflated prices. But slashing the subsidies, French Agriculture Minister Herve Gaymard argued in July, threatened "the current idea of civilization and French farming that we have."

Nowhere has France's rural decline been more apparent than in Provence, where lavender -- more than olive trees and Vincent Van Gogh -- is the signature landmark of the Mediterranean region.

Lavender farming was invented almost a century ago in Provence, to meet the growing demands of France's perfume industry. The plant's popularity soared in World War I, when army doctors began using it as an antiseptic. At its peak, in 1960, the industry produced 150 tons of essential lavender oil yearly.

But plant diseases, foreign competition and the lure of more lucrative jobs elsewhere took their toll on Provencal lavender cultivation. Hundreds of farmers went out of business. At its nadir, in 1992, the region was producing just 25 tons of essential oil a year.

"Until the 1960s, lavender was pretty profitable," said Claude Chailan, a lavender specialist at ONIPPAM office, as he drove a visitor through the rugged pine-covered hills, and rosy-stoned villages of lavender country. "But once cheaper competition arrived from Eastern European countries, we lost our edge. Even if their quality was poorer."

Chailan should know. For decades, his father farmed lavender high in the hills near Nice. But none of the three Chailan children took over the operation. Chailan's father is now retired, and the family homestead rented to sheep farmers.

But the Cassan family weathered the rough years. Alain Cassan and his brother, Pierre, diversified their operation to include more lucrative lavendin cultivation, and a side business drying foliage. When the French government began offering lavender farmers a one-time, $4,000 grant per acre planted, son Benoit joined them.

"I always had the idea in the back of my mind," said Benoit Cassan, 30, who previously worked as a fertilizer salesman. Today, he farms nearly 200 acres of his own lavender.

"It's a passion," he said. "You have to borrow. You have to wait. But I hope there will be a return."