Along one of the winding roads that connect the solitary farms of the Mayenne region of France, the engine of a van roars. It's driven by André Besnier, a young cooper from Montsûrs, one of the small villages that completes the endless mosaic of fields in the area. It's October 19, 1933, and he's carrying a pile of empty barrels. He also carries an ambition: to get the local farmers to sell him milk. He has a good nose for business; he's sensed the possibility of making easy money in the dairy industry and has jumped in headfirst: the barrel workshop is doing well, but he believes he could do better by making cheese. "At that time, the farmers made their own butter and didn't want to sell their milk to anyone," recalls one of Besnier's assistants, who was with him in the van. "To make them believe that other ranchers had already sold to him, he filled a few boots with water," the witness continues in an extensive report published in 1990 in The ObséconomyThe trick worked: at night he would happily unload 30 liters of milk from his workshop in the medieval village of Lavan.