By Robert V. Camuto
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, January 28, 2007; P01

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.

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?

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.

Looking over the seven convention buildings that make up the Porte de Versailles -- some of them connected with moving walkways -- the immensity of the salon began to sink in. Suddenly, we felt hungry. We ducked into one of the buildings and found ourselves in the middle of an exhibit featuring products from southwest France. We shared a table -- elbow-to-elbow with other patrons -- at one of the many temporary restaurants set up for the fair. We ate steaming plates of cassoulet, with smoked duck and ham, washed down with wine by the pitcher from Gaillac.

After the rib-sticking lunch, we undertook a walk across France and its territories spread over what seemed like miles of pathways through three buildings.

There were pralines and macaroons from the Southwest, oysters from the Aquitaine, a cooking demonstration of sauteed apples and foie gras from the Perigord, ravioli from the Rhone valley, big wheels of Savoy cheese and an olive oil bar from northern Provence. There were enough free samples to have made a lunch -- wine included.

Of course, there was Roquefort cheese from Roquefort, Camembert from Camembert, Armagnac from Armagnac, champagne from Champagne and liqueurs from everywhere, made from just about everything from plums to poppies. And that was just the beginning of the afternoon.

We learned how the famous local blue-green cave molds are naturally collected (using loaves of bread) to make Roquefort cheese.

We learned how mare's milk can be used in cosmetics products and soaps. Actually, it was a little more awkward than that: I blurted out -- in French -- in amazement: "Horses make milk?!" (Forgive me. I was born in Manhattan.) A woman exhibitor explained that, well, oui, the females do. My son, the sixth-grader, rolled his eyes and said, "Next time you have a question like that, Dad, ask me -- I knew that."

At one point, I remember being pulled by the flow of the crowd in the direction of bright colors and Caribbean music animating the exhibitions of France's West Indian territories. Caribbean bars were selling rum punch by the glass, and the thirsty were lined up three deep, clogging the aisles like a Club Med at happy hour.

Our next destination was the rabbits. We consulted our maps but somehow ended up wandering through a few thousand square feet of hunting gear (night vision goggles, anyone?) and camouflage. Then we watched part of a purebred dog show, which was in plain sight of an exhibit of cat breeds. The felines snoozed under a big banner that could have been viewed as a provocation: "Cats," it read, "the animal of the 21st century." Finally we found the rabbits, about 600 of them, all arranged by color and breed and fastidiously graded on 100-point scales.

We headed over to the hall of the big animals -- the slobbering pigs, those races of muscular French beef cows as big as rhinos, and varieties of sheep so fanciful they seemed to have stepped right out of illustrated fairy tales.

We had just enough time to find seats in the large exhibition ring for a show of the ranching and riding traditions of the Camargue in western Provence, featuring gardians (traditional cowboys), the Camargue's particular breed of small white horses and its black bulls. One of the highlights of the show involved the tradition of riders' grabbing whole oranges from lasses in folkloric dresses positioned around the arena and then tossing the oranges into the crowd. Citrus whizzed over our heads -- some splattering against the stands and spectators, making orange juice -- French fresh-squeezed orange juice, that is.

That evening, with the smell of barnyard lingering in our noses, we returned to the urban vibe of Saint-Germain and dined in a smart, if overpriced, bistro. I ordered veal T-bone, which, after a day on the farm, somehow seemed much more than just a steak.

The Salon International de l'Agriculture (International Agriculture Exhibition) runs March 3-11 at the Porte de Versailles (on Metro Line 12) in Paris. Adult admission is about $15.50. Hours are 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Do as I suggest, not as we did: Arrive early and avoid weekend crowds. For more information and advance ticket sales: http://www.salon-agriculture.com.

Robert V. Camuto last wrote for Travel about wine auctions in Burgundy.