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The speech we are going to make comes from our collective.
The graduates of the class of 2022 are reunited today for the last time after three or four years at AgroParisTech. Many of us do not want to pretend to be proud and deserving of obtaining this diploma at the end of an education which, on the whole, pushed us to participate in the ongoing social and ecological devastation. We don't see ourselves as the "Talents of a Sustainable Planet."
We do not see ecological and social devastation as "issues" or "challenges" to which we should find "solutions" as engineers. We do not believe that we need "all agricultures." Rather, we see that agribusiness is waging a war on the living world and against farmers everywhere on Earth. We do not see science and technology as neutral and apolitical.
We believe that technological innovation or start-ups will save nothing but capitalism. We do not believe in sustainable development or green growth, nor in "ecological transition," an expression which implies that society can become sustainable without getting rid of the dominant social order.
AgroParisTech educates hundreds of students every year to work for the industry in various ways: tamper with plants in laboratories for multinationals which are increasingly enslaving farmers; design processed meals and chemotherapy to then treat those who fall ill as a result; invent "good conscience" labels to allow executives to believe themselves heroic by eating better than others; develop so-called “green” energies which make it possible to accelerate the digitization of society while polluting and exploiting on the other side of the world; produce reports on CSR [Social and Environmental Responsibility] that are as long and preposterous as the crimes they conceal are scandalous; or still, to count frogs and butterflies so that those who pour concrete can make them disappear legally.
In our eyes, these jobs are destructive and to choose them is to do harm by serving the interests of a few.