Investigation. From farms to firms

Sociologists, observers of the agricultural world, François Purseigle and Bertrand Hervieu, specialists in rural issues, fear a difficult generational renewal in the 390,000 farms that France still has. Of nearly 200,000 farm managers who will be retiring by 2030, only 20% say they have a possible successor. In a growing number of farms, particularly cereals, work is delegated to specialized companies, to subcontractors, from cultivation to harvest. As a result, “corporate agriculture also destabilizes the usual partners of farmers, which are professional agricultural organizations, banks and agro-supply firms,” note the authors. In 2020, the farm manager represents only 1.6% of the working population. In rural areas, farmers, who have become a minority, no longer carry their vision of the territory. It is therefore not enough to include « food sovereignty » in the function of the Minister of Agriculture, as Emmanuel Macron did, to stop the damage of ultraliberalism against the work of peasants.