ESS Conference - How to make peasant farming a reality in the 21st century?
This event is part of a series of conferences on the Social Solidarity Economy organized by the CRISS department of the Laboratoire de Recherche Sociétés et Humanités (LARSH), with the Intervention sociale teaching stream and the "Développement local et économie solidaire" and "Tiers-Lieux et dynamiques territoriales" courses of the Institut Sociétés et Humanités' Gestion des territoires et développement local master's degree program, with the support of the Chaire en économie sociale et solidaire et soutenabilité du territoire Hauts-de-France (ChairESS). It is being produced, exceptionally, in partnership with the PHARE association, holder of the Auton'hommes PTCE.
At the start of 2026, France was the scene of an agricultural mobilization on a scale never seen before, both in terms of its duration and the forms of action it took. While sectoral difficulties in the agricultural sector and outbreaks of fever have not been rare phenomena since the 1960s, this period also marked the emergence of the injunction to produce more. To this day, this injunction has never renewed its main message, nor the
to achieve it: specialization, concentration, investment, debt (Neveu, 2024). As a result, this crisis is a sign of a deeper malaise, linked to the structural maladjustment of the agricultural model.
The French agricultural sector remains highly dependent on the European Union and the Common Agricultural Policy, whose subsidy mechanisms, indexed to surface area, structurally favor large farms. There is also the question of the renewal of the agricultural workforce, a central issue for the coming decades (Purseigle, 2025): major financial structures are replacing the family farming model, through the use of agricultural work companies (ETA) (Hervieu & Purseigle, 2022). Added to this is a highly competitive global
environment, marked by the emergence of new
highly competitive global environment, marked by heterogeneous standards, trade policies and regulatory frameworks.
In this context, how can we invent tomorrow's agriculture? What dependencies do we need to free ourselves from? Peasant agriculture
suffers from both an image deficit and a lack of awareness of its practices and principles.
Climate change is challenging global production systems (IPCC, 2014, reassessed in 2023), with a heightened threat to food security. Should we consider only pessimistic prospects, or are there trajectories for more sustainable and resilient production in the face of climate hazards? What new partnerships can emerge between humans, animals and plants? How can the changing legal status of nature open up new perspectives, and what are its limits?
Can we produce without destroying?
Can we produce without destroying (Lallau & Dufumier, 2010)? Long considered as mere production supports, soils now appear as a fundamental foundation of life, at the crossroads of food, climate, energy, health and landscape issues (Dron & Guerin, 2018). Does the future lie in soils, no longer seen as simple production supports, but as living reservoirs? Can we see the combination of livestock farming and cash crops as a path to development? In regions marked by mining, where soils have been degraded and landscapes profoundly transformed, how can we rethink the links between town and country, between productive spaces and care logics?
Lastly, what is the real issue here?
Finally, what are the real political and social issues at stake in these transformations? Why is agroecology struggling to spread on a large scale? Can productivist norms be challenged? To what extent does the current crisis open up new room for maneuver for agricultural alternatives?
These are the questions that this conference will seek to explore in greater depth, with the participation of players from the social and solidarity economy, local authorities, researchers and students.
These are the questions that this conference will seek to answer.
