Well it does work to explain maybe pre-1800 patterns, France was already one of the most advance country in the agricultural sector, one can't expect France to really be much stronger on that front, the deal is the 1800-2000 period and also the borders of the French state, you need a very expansionistic France, especially considering that England was pretty reliant on foreign food supply as was Germany during the late industrial era.
1800-1945 specifically. Since WWII France's population has grown a fair amount.
People these days think Germany used to be aggressive (discount WW2 and it wasn't), but it's tendencies were a pale shadow of France's. And that spoken as an avowed Francophile
Well, Prussia was once described as "an army with a state". Both nations were expansionist when they had (or thought they had) a military advantage.