Summary of Research by Elizabeth Van Deventer

Farmers around the world are increasingly facing pressure to "modernize," to undergo a profound shift from primarily subsistence polyculture to specialized market production and to replace human labor with capital-intensive, high-energy technologies. In France, this transformation has been going on for over a century. It became particularly acute after World War II when massive restructuring in agriculture contributed to a 70% decline in farm jobs between 1954 and 1990, a rural exodus, and paradoxically, a dramatic rise in agricultural production. The changes brought about by this "rural crisis" are described by the French sociologist Hervieu as "the greatest upheaval [France] has experienced since the agricultural, urban and feudal revolution of the 12th century" (1989: 31). While the structural ramifications of this historical process have been well documented, there is a relative dearth of research attempting to understand how farmers at the local level have responded to this upheaval.

Agricultural modernization in France since WWII was shaped by the country's need for increased agricultural production after the war in order to regain its self-sufficiency. To fulfill this need, numerous policies were created with the goal of transforming the peasantry from what were seen as "isolated, subsistence producers" into "food producers for the nation."  Bonanno (1987) argues that there was an underlying assumption of an evolutionary advancement in society that shaped the direction of all of Western agriculture by defining the persistence of small-scale family farms as traditional and by reinforcing the assumption that large-scale forms of farming were more advanced.  In this light, peasants were seen as static, unchanging entities that only stood in the way of progress.  Such assumptions are reflected in the French Orientation Laws of 1960-1962 which sought to modernize French agriculture (Hervieu 1989). Agricultural modernization was defined as transforming subsistence polyculture into specialized production for a market economy, mechanizing work, advancing technology, and consolidating farms.  It was assumed that this process would cause a concomitant exodus from the land of thousands of farmers
(Keeler 1987).

The goal of this research is to understand how three generations of individual Charolais beef cattle farmers in southern Burgundy have resisted, contested, and/or adopted conceptions of agricultural modernization promoted through rural development in terms of their farming practices, knowledge, and identities. Three interrelated sets of questions are:

2) In what ways has this involved the adoption or rejection of a technological, scientific, and/or institutionally-derived knowledge that is alien to previous generations of farmers?  Has the adoption of such "outside" knowledge led to a decline in the continuity of agricultural practices and knowledge passed from generation to generation on the farm?

3) In what ways have individual members of farm families adopted or rejected identities that became associated with this historical transformation in agricultural practices and knowledge (e.g., paysan, exploitant agricole)?  How do farmers draw upon and use these identities in relation to different farming practices and types of knowledge to manipulate a larger system for which they do not always see as being in their best interest?

Last updated 2/24/2007.