It’s a little music that has been coming back since the start of the agricultural protest on January 16: under the farmers’ protest a crisis in the countryside would emerge. Certainly, from the National Rally (RN) to La France insoumise (LFI), it is first and foremost the European Union, free trade treaties and constraints that are denounced. But, argued the president of the RN, Jordan Bardella, on January 20, the farmers’ movement “also carries the voice of rural areas”.
And yet, correct many actors, reducing the countryside to farmers is a caricature. The rural territories, diverse, are not only agricultural, far from it. They are even less and less so, in fact. Farmers, 1.6 million in 1982 (7.1% of workers), now number only 400,000 (1.5%) in France. In the countryside, they only represent between 5% and 15% of the active population, recalls Yves Jean, professor emeritus at the University of Poitiers and member of the Ruralités laboratory. However, he indicates, there are also “25% of worker households, 25% of employee households, intermediate professions, middle managers, many new residents, who make up the social diversity of rural areas”.
Furthermore, the peasant crisis is first and foremost that of a small agricultural business that would like to live from its work and more freedom to undertake, noted François Purseigle, associate researcher at Sciences Po Paris and professor at the National Agronomic School. From toulouse. “It is not a ruralist movement but the crisis of a certain ruralityhe concludes. It is above all the movement of small bosses who feel dispossessed. » Certainly, this activity is central in the countryside. “It is the farmers who bring life to the land, who maintain the landscapes and nourish a local economy”notes Michel Fournier, president of the Association of Rural Mayors of France. “We, rural elected officialshe admits, we are aware that if we do not support the farmers, we are shooting ourselves in the foot. »
“Empty campaigns”
Political leaders do not dispute this sociological reality. However, they all evoke a “convergence between the agricultural crisis and the crises experienced by certain rural areas”, in the words of Manon Meunier, LFI deputy for Haute-Vienne. The agronomist coordinated a “ La France insoumise plan for rural territories ». “Many of the topics raised by farmers largely echo the concerns of the rural world”agrees David Valence, deputy for Vosges (Radical Party, related to the Renaissance group) and president of the delegation to local authorities of the National Assembly.
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