Yonne, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France

:FR: Yonne is a French department named after the river Yonne. It is one of the eight constituent departments of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté and is located in the north-west of the region, bordering Île-de-France. It was created in 1790 during the French Revolution. Its prefecture is Auxerre and its postcode number is 89.

Economy Over fifty percent of the inhabitants of the department are engaged in agricultural activities. Yonne is one of the poorest and most rural departments in France. During the hundred years leading up to 1962, its population declined by around 100,000, while all of the surrounding departments experienced population growth. Yonne had been bypassed by the development of the railways. As French industry flourished elsewhere in the late nineteenth century, the young people left Yonne seeking better opportunities, and the department stagnated.

The viticulture industry was severely affected by the advent of powdery mildew and the arrival of Phylloxera in the nineteenth century; at the same time, the development of the railway network allowed cheaper wines from other regions to undercut Chablis wine in the Paris market. The once-thriving industry never recovered. By 1945, only 4000 hectares of grapevines remained, and only 471 hectares of grapes were grown for Chablis.

More recently, the population trend has been reversed. During the period 1999 to 2007, it rose by 8000 to a total of 341,418. However, with a population of 46 inhabitants per square kilometre, the density in Yonne is still less than half that for the whole of France, which was 100.5 for the same year.