
Considered the greatest mathematician of the 20th century, Alexandre Grothendieck lived in Villecun (Hérault), above Lodève, in the early 1980s, in a house where he lived what we would today call decline, heating with wood, lighting with kerosene lamps.
This is where Pascal Poot is installed today, in the shoes of this exceptional ancestor who taught him class when he was little. He remembers not having understood much of his step-grandfather's lessons. “He could give us a lesson on the diffusion of light through a squash.”
When he bought the surrounding land, 30 years ago, only thyme, broom and thistles grew there. They say about him: “He's a madman who tries to grow vegetables without water” . It's a good joke!
The worst part is that he never doubted it. At 5 years old, he is already sowing seeds. A collector, a friend of his father, offers the son some grains of wheat, coming from a pyramid, dating back more than 2000 years. “They gave ears in the shape of a pyramid,” he remembers. What is a passion about?
Fifty years later, Pascal Poot portrays an Alexandre Grothendieck of an entirely plausible seed. He can talk for hours about quantum physics or astrophysics and has a head full of hypotheses that he formulates in scientific journals. His videos went viral with the permaculture boom. “There are good women who want to clone themselves with me ,” laughs Pascal. Rachel, her partner, doesn't make her laugh.
Bearded, ageless, rarely going out, the man cultivates decline as much as his seeds. The farm, moreover, has remained in its original state. The wood stove, energy autonomy, organic at all meals, 50 hectares of land in the middle of nowhere where he grows 150 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, as many vegetables.
Its seeds resemble it. Raised the hard way, in the open air, without water, without phytosanitary products, they resist all weather, all diseases, like weeds “because no one took care of them and they had to adapt ".
If you type Ancient seeds on the internet, his name comes up alongside Ko okopelli , a notoriety which allows him to double his sales each year. When production can follow. “The year we opened the site, the entire harvest was gone in 2 months.”
Success is deserved. Its non-tampered varieties contain 20 times more antioxidants, vitamins and polythenols than the hybrids, sold in the official catalog, and until last June, the only ones authorized to be marketed in France. Pascal calls them “clones, zombies devoid of adaptive capacities, supposedly selected for their productivity, in reality calibrated to depend on fertilizers and phosphate supplied by the same multinationals, Monsanto alias Bayer and others”.
He doesn't eat those seeds. “When it happens to me, I feel limp.” Anti-lobby, anti-system, outlaw for a long time, he never minced his words. “75% of the global seed market is controlled by 10 multinationals, the same companies supply fertilizers, manufacture medicines and finance research.”
Some of his detractors still ventured into his internships. “It’s funny to see them show up, ask questions, then admit they’re wrong.” Funny ? Except when we all have to admit it: phosphate, outrageously used in intensive agriculture, is becoming rarer on the planet. In the event of a shortage, industrial seeds no longer have a future. They cannot do without phosphate fertilizers unlike old seeds. Who then will cry famine? In La Fontaine's fable, it is the cicada, but in the future, it could well be the ants.
If you're interested, his website is here: www.lepotagerdesante.com