In Paris, It's the Real Savoir Fair

This may shock you, but most French people don't sit around talking about the relationship between Monet and Manet; they couldn't care less what Karl Lagerfeld is up to; and these days it seems that even critiquing America isn't the fun it used to be.

So what gets the Gallic cultural juices going? Basque or Southwestern swine, Limousine or Charolais cattle, or just about any of France's 60 breeds of sheep, for starters. France, like no other place on Earth, exalts, codifies and rates its regional agricultural products, from wine and cheese to ham, olives and even lentils -- a fact that once led Charles de Gaulle to ask, "How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 types of cheese?"

France's reverence for agriculture is fueled by tradition, nostalgia and subsidy-heavy farm policy. France may be a bit smaller than Texas, but it is (after the United States) the world's second-biggest agricultural exporter. Farming may represent a pittance (about 3 percent) of France's economy, but -- more than in any other industrialized nation -- it remains the spiritual core.

Which is precisely why a pilgrimage to Paris in the dead of winter is essential for Francophiles or anyone with an interest in animal husbandry, gastronomy, wine or farming.

During eight days, Paris's sprawling Porte de Versailles exhibition center turns itself into what is billed as the "world's biggest farm." To imagine the Salon International de l'Agriculture, think of a big American state fair with a few thousand horses, cows, goats, sheep, donkeys and rabbits and show arenas in every direction. (Because of fears of avian flu, the 2006 edition was absent all chickens and live birds.) Get rid of the midway rides, corn dogs and Bud, and replace them with meticulously organized region-by-region exhibitions, including acres of sausages, hams, foie gras, oysters and, of course, cheeses, along with rivers of wine -- all competing for gold, silver and bronze medals.

Add to the stew a parade of France's top politicians, who come to pose for the nightly news while admiring cattle, stroking cuddly sheep or biting into specialties from politically important regions, and you begin to get an idea of the grandeur of it all.

Paris's hip-hop scene: A rabbit at the agricultural show.

Agricultural fairs have been going on in Paris since 1843 as a way of bringing city folk in touch with the French countryside. The current version, a product of the 20th century, is attended by more than half a million people. It's laid out in French, but there's little language barrier because it's visual more than anything. I mean, unless you're seriously addicted to Sunday morning talk shows, how much explanation do you need to understand a chain-saw competition?

As Far as the Eye Can See

My wife and son and I arrived in Paris on the second Saturday morning of the salon's 2006 edition with the idea that the better part of a day would be plenty of time to see everything there was to see and sample France's bounty from Normandy to the Pyrenees to Alsace.

We were wrong.

Nothing -- not even years of attending the State Fair of Texas -- could quite prepare us for the scale of the French fair. In six hours, we covered about half the event and made it to none of the exhibitions put on by Italy and other countries from Europe, South America and Asia.

We'd begun the morning late, setting out from our hotel in Saint-Germain-des-Pres, which is about as far as you can get from the farm. We strolled up the Boulevard Saint-Germain, where shop windows displayed lots of cool-looking, nonutilitarian stuff, including handmade shoes for $1,400. We then packed sardine-like into a subway car headed to the Porte de Versailles. At noon, we were released into a throng of humans, backpacks and baby strollers, all headed in one direction.

Just after the ticket entrance, an outdoor timber sports demonstration set the decidedly rural tone: A group of lumberjack types were showing off their wood-cutting skills with axes and roaring chain saws.