Words speak louder than actions: the ‘peasant’ dimension of the Confédération Paysanne's alternative to industrial farming

Abstract

Through its historical account of the Confédération Paysanne (CP)'s origins and early years (France), this paper explores the ways in which ‘peasant’ discourses are shaped by non-peasant understandings of what ‘being a peasant’ should mean. As we shall see, far from reflecting an innate and immutable ‘peasant’ way of being or seeing, references to ‘peasantness’ and ‘peasant farming’ act as discursive tools to both unite a heterogeneous activist base (composed of marginal and marginalized farmers) and advance organizational interests. This requires the CP – and its predecessors – to respond to a series of external constraints. In the course of this paper, we shall also show how academics play an important mediating role in the process of constructing or adapting the CP's ‘peasant’ discourse.

Keywords:

• Confédération Paysanne
• peasant movements
• peasantness

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Jun Borras and the reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this text. I am especially grateful to Henry Bernstein for his valued comments and ideas on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes

¹Now European Coordination – Via Campesina.

²Fédération Nationale des Syndicats d'Exploitants Agricoles.

³Centre National des Jeunes Agriculteurs.

⁴This dual ambition was included in its founding motto: syndicat pour une agriculture paysanne et la défense de ses travailleurs (which translates as ‘trade union for peasant farming and the defence of its workers’).

⁵Unlike LVC, however, the notion of size is not explicitly referred to. In its 1998 definition, the CP elusively refers to farms ‘on a human scale’.

⁶Frederick Buttel defines productivism in agriculture as ‘the notion that a desirable agriculture is one in which there is progressive self-reinforcing improvement in its total factor productivity through agricultural research and organisational upgrading of farms and agro-food firms’ (Buttel 1994, 20).

⁷On the notion of ‘true France', see Lebovics (1994).

⁸This partially echoes Chaia Heller's work on the CP's involvement in the anti-genetically modified organism (GMO) movement. While distancing ourselves from her notion of ‘postindustrial agriculture’, we also focus on the strategic uses of legitimating symbols and political values for the advancement of collective interests (Heller 2013).

⁹Brothers, sisters, parents, children who live on the farm and take part in the activities on the farm but without earning wages.

¹⁰That is, of less than 5 ha of Utilized Agricultural Land (UAL). This corresponds to the official definition of a small farm according to the French Ministry of Agriculture, which is approximately 3 ha more than the 2 ha sometimes used to define ‘small farms’ in the South (Bernstein 2010, 4).

¹¹Centre National des Jeunes Agriculteurs.

¹²Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

¹³Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes.

¹⁴Société française d’économie rurale.

¹⁵Association des ruralistes français.

¹⁶With important figures like Placide Rambaud and Henri Lefèbvre, Henri Mendras is widely recognised as a founding father of French rural sociology.

¹⁷By ‘traditional’ farmers, I am referring to those whose disappearance had been planned by the state.

¹⁸Interview with Jo Bourgeais, Bagnolet, 23 November 2007.

¹⁹The ‘établis’ were activists who sought to mobilize workers and peasants by working in factories and on farms.

²⁰Parti Socialiste Unifié (set up in 1960).

²¹In its broader sense, the term ‘gauchiste’ designates left-wing activists who are critical of the mainstream socialist (SFIO) and communist (PCF) left.

²²I say the bulk because a small – and marginalized – group of economists offered a more classical approach centred on class differentiation within the ‘peasant’ group. Two articles published in the Trotskyist journal Critiques de l'Economie Politique offer a noteworthy critique of the dominant approach (Cavailhès 1976; Ossard 1976). Both Cavailhès and Ossard abandoned Marxism in the early 1980s and went on to hold high-ranking positions in the INRA.

²³Within the CNRS, and through the work of the sociologist Marcel Jollivet, an ‘interdisciplinary research program on the environment’ was set up in 1979 whose objectives were very similar to those of the SaD (Jollivet 1992).

²⁴Centre National d'Etudes Economiques et Juridiques de l'Agriculture.

²⁵Centre d'Initiatives Rurales (translates as Centre for Rural Initiatives).

²⁶The CIR later merged into another similar network, the CIVAM (Centres d'Initiatives pour Valoriser l'Agriculture et le Milieu Rural).

²⁷Association pour la Formation et l'Inforamation Paysannes.

²⁸Centre d'Etudes et d'Echanges Internationaux Paysans et d'Actions Locales.

²⁹A number of progressive journals also published special issues on alternative farming (which included articles by farmers, activists and academics). These included POUR (published by the Groupe de Recherche pour l'Education et la Prospective, GREP), Autogestions and Revue du MAUSS.

³⁰Centre d'Etude pour un Développement Agricole Plus Autonome.

³¹Action Locale pour un Développement International plus Solidaire.

³²The CEP-Rural formed part of the ‘popular education’ activities of the association Peuple et Culture (PeC) Isère.

³³On the links between ‘indigenous’ and ‘expert’ knowledge and the need for a ‘dialogical democracy’, see Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe (2001).

³⁴The CERAT – linked to Science Po Grenoble and which included CNRS researchers – began focusing on agriculture-related issues. The CERAT's activities in the field of farming and agriculture drew on participatory action research methods (PAR, recherche action) (see Muller 2004, 113–22, 2009), echoing the work on Farming Systems Research (FAR) and Agricultural Knowledge and Information Systems (AKIS) developed by Röling and his colleagues at Wageningen University.

³⁵Institut Régional d'Economie et de la Planification (IREP). The IREP was initially part of the University of Grenoble's School of Social Sciences which was headed by the heterodox economist Gérard Destanne de Bernis (founder of the ‘Grenoble regulation theory’). The IREP housed a research group whose activities were specifically centred on agriculture-related issues. The IREP would later be linked to the INRA.

³⁶Among them, the Paysans Travailleurs Pays de Loire, the Syndicat Démocratique des Paysans de Savoie.

³⁷Réseau d'experimentation et de liaison des initiatives en espace rural (translates as Network for the Experimentation and Connection of Initiatives in Rural Areas).

³⁸ Alternatives Paysannes became Alternatives Rurales in 1992.

³⁹This was, for instance, the case of the Syndicat Démocratique des Paysans de Savoie – which was linked to the PT (see Gandet and Reverdy 1999).

⁴⁰The term ‘exploitation rurale’ directly refers to the term ‘exploitation agricole’ which is a technical term for ‘farm’.

⁴¹Confédération Nationale des Syndicats de Travailleurs Paysans (set up in 1981).

⁴²The FNSP brought together farmers who were generally sympathetic to the PT's demands but who had been reluctant to break away from the FNSEA.

⁴³Fédération Associative pour le Développement de l'Emploi Agricole et Rural.

⁴⁴The CNSTP received 7.1 percent of the vote and the FNSP 5.8 percent in the 1983 elections.

⁴⁵General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

⁴⁶Alliance Paysans Ecologistes Consommateurs (1992).

⁴⁷Chaia Heller talks of a ‘rationality of solidarity’ to describe the CP's ‘humanistic concern with maintaining the integrity of social fabrics’ (Heller 2013, 27).

⁴⁸1992 in Lyon (CP General Assembly); 1993 in Saint-Lô; 1995 in Voguë.

Additional information

Edouard Morena is currently a lecturer in French and European Studies at King's College London (UK). He is also an associate researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-affiliated Laboratoire Dynamiques Sociales et Recomposition des Espaces (LADYSS) in Nanterre (France). His work focuses on the meanings associated with the ‘peasant’ concept, and their uses by ‘peasant’ movements at the national and international levels. He is also interested in theoretical debates surrounding the agrarian/peasant question, and their influence on agrarian movements’ strategies, discourses and perceptions of the self.