Guil­laume Boc­quet is Direc­tor of Reg­u­la­to­ry Affairs at Axe­ma, the French asso­ci­a­tion of indus­tri­al play­ers in the agri-equip­ment and agrien­vi­ron­ment sec­tors. Guil­laume grad­u­at­ed from UTC in 1999 major­ing in Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and is also involved in the orga­ni­za­tion of Agritech Day. Let’s meet him!

Axe­ma is a fed­er­a­tion of agri­cul­tur­al machin­ery man­u­fac­tur­ers and importers, with 250 mem­ber com­pa­nies. It plays a key role in agri­cul­tur­al inno­va­tion and places France a leader in the field of agri­cul­tur­al machin­ery, essen­tial to food sov­er­eign­ty and the eco­log­i­cal tran­si­tion. An indus­try that gen­er­ates 18 bil­lion euros in sales and stands out for its com­mit­ment to the inte­gra­tion of advanced tech­nolo­gies such as arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and robot­ics. “This is dis­cussed at Agritech Day, which we’ve been orga­niz­ing for the past sev­en years and which was held this year in part­ner­ship with UTC. The chal­lenges fac­ing indus­try are indeed numer­ous, whether they involve dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, decar­boniza­tion, social tran­si­tion or agro-ecol­o­gy. Our indus­try will be short of around 25 000 jobs by 2030. Robots will play a key role in reliev­ing farm­ers of tedious or repet­i­tive tasks. Agri-equip­ment will be able to respond to this need,” empha­sizes Guil­laume Boc­quet, Axe­ma’s Direc­tor of Reg­u­la­to­ry Affairs. His duties include mon­i­tor­ing tech­ni­cal devel­op­ments, train­ing mem­bers on reg­u­la­to­ry changes and rep­re­sent­ing the pro­fes­sion on Euro­pean and inter­na­tion­al stan­dard­iza­tion com­mit­tees. “After ten years in the auto­mo­tive sec­tor, in a design office, I arrived ten years ago in the agri­cul­tur­al machin­ery sec­tor, in a world I did­n’t know before and which is prov­ing to be an extreme­ly sup­port­ive and friend­ly sec­tor. There’s com­pe­ti­tion, of course, but above all there is a lot of good­will. A sec­tor dri­ven by a noble voca­tion: to feed a grow­ing world pop­u­la­tion with few­er farm­ers, while respect­ing the plan­et,” adds Guil­laume Bocquet.

Working in the general interest of the sector

For Axe­ma, it’s not a ques­tion of pit­ting agroe­quip­ment against envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance. On the con­trary, prof­itable farms with high­per­for­mance equip­ment will be bet­ter equipped to meet the objec­tives of the so-called “green deal”. Trac­tors, viti­cul­tur­al tools, agri­cul­tur­al robots, grape har­vesters, dairy and live­stock equip­ment, green­hous­es and oth­er equip­ment for main­tain­ing green spaces — these are just a few exam­ples of the prod­uct fam­i­lies rep­re­sent­ed by the major play­ers in the sec­tor, as well as by the SMEs and VSEs rep­re­sent­ed by the syn­di­cate. “Our mem­bers are locat­ed all over France, with a strong pres­ence in the Hauts-de-France, Grand Est and Pays de la Loire regions, as well as through­out the wine-grow­ing area. I go out reg­u­lar­ly into the field and help our mem­bers to under­stand the reg­u­la­tions and defend their inter­ests vis-àvis the pub­lic author­i­ties. We have a real role of influ­ence”, con­tin­ues the UTC grad­u­ate engi­neer, who rec­om­mends that future engi­neers move towards tech­nolo­gies that make sense. With­out the help of machines and even robots, par­tic­u­lar­ly in dairy farm­ing, agri­cul­ture would no longer be pos­si­ble. “Take an inter­est in sec­tors oth­er than aero­nau­tics or auto­mo­biles. Take a look at agri­cul­tur­al equip­ment, which is devel­op­ing more and more high-tech, on-board sys­tems made up of more and more arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, elec­tron­ics and hydraulics. All with a view to pro­vid­ing sus­tain­able, effi­cient solu­tions for high­per­for­mance and eth­i­cal agriculture.

KD