Ihe peasant world is facing a social and environmental crisis: every week, according to the manifesto of the Nourrir collective, which brings together around fifty organisations, two hundred French farms are disappearing. THE agricultural census 2020 shows that 50% of farms are run by farmers over the age of 55: by 2030, half of our farmers will therefore be retired. Among those who leave today, many do not find a buyer for their farm.
This dramatic development must push us collectively to act. Behind this massive destruction of the peasantry, there is the phenomenon of land grabbing. While the government is due to present its agricultural orientation bill (LOA) during the summer, it is more than ever necessary to include land regulation measures in it to limit land grabbing.
Grabbing is the massive acquisition of hectares of agricultural land, most often by “agri-managers” – who can hardly be called farmers since they are removed from working the land and turned towards mainly industrial and financial management – or by French or foreign multinationals.
The loss of 80,000 agricultural jobs in ten years
Journalist Lucile Leclair demonstrates the extent of this phenomenon in her investigative book Heist on land (Threshold, 2022). These firms carve out empires of several thousand hectares and have agro-industrial practices to the detriment of farmers and agroecology. This is made possible by the development of the market for the shares of agricultural companies that control land, and by legislation that is now unsuited to current issues.
Two reports were published in February on these topics: one by Friends of the Earthdenouncing land grabbing in France, the other by the Terre de Liens Federationwhich has documented this phenomenon for several years.
A third of French farms, again indicates the agricultural census, have disappeared in twenty years, and we have lost 80,000 agricultural jobs in ten years. This is largely due to the growing concentration of land in the hands of a few financiers, which inhibits the settlement of new farmers, and most often manifests itself in the absorption of small farms by large ones.
Mechanization leads to a simplification of crops
However, according to the Terre de liens report, while a small farm employs an average of 4.8 people, a large farm employs 2.4. The concentration of land also allows the managers of these firms to monopolize aid from the common agricultural policy (CAP), since the current system remunerates farms by the number of hectares, further widening inequalities within the farming world and favoring de facto the expansion of farms and therefore the loss of jobs.
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