Abstract
Néo-farmers (fr. Néo-paysan-ne-s) are farmers who do not come from an agricultural background, who inherited neither land nor a farm from their family. They dispose of motivations to transform towards more sustainable agroecological systems, their trajectories question dual categories of urban-rural, and they cast doubt on linear pathways of ‘progress’ as a universally desirable. In a context of de-agriculturalization in high-income economies, néo-farmers are now increasingly trying to establish themselves and access land for experimentation, often with alternative farming practices. Based on a multi-year ethnographic fieldwork in the Canton of Vaud, Switzerland, this blog post sketches the challenges as well as the relational realities and dreams of néo-farmers as a desirable alternative to the current (dystopian) system of agro-industrial agriculture.
The agri-food system at crossroads: increasing agro-industrialization or alternative development pathways?
The industrialization of society begins, and ends, with agriculture. In Switzerland, as well as elsewhere, agri-food systems have come at crossroads. To achieve a genuinely sustainable agroecological transition, we must divert from the acceleration of agro-industrialization and the fantasma of freeing humans from working the land. First, because industrial agriculture has proven to lead to tremendous environmental impacts, whether land erosion, biodiversity loss, disruption of the nitrogen, phosphorus, and water cycles or global climate change etc [1]. Second, we lack evidence that liberalized, digitalized and automated agriculture (i.e., smart-farming) can be sustainable to equitably satisfy human needs within planetary boundaries, its capital gains rather deepen the pockets of agrifood empires while the world faces multiple food crises[2]. Third, because theory and practice show that maintaining functional agrifood systems, adapted to their territory and planetary boundaries[3], means to maintain an active agricultural work force[4].
Trajectories of agriculture intensification are currently shaped by three variables[5]: surface area, capital/fossil energy and labor (both human or animal). Increasing arable surface area is hardly possible, both for economic and ecological reasons, since land farming competes with other land uses and ecological habitats. Increasing intensification through fossil capital (e.g. via mechanization or chemical inputs) only lead to dystopian horizons: Capital-intensive agricultures and their economies of scale above all serve economic interests5, yet prove inapt when it comes to climate adaptation, energy yields and organic matter recycling. The narrative of a highly technological development that decouples yields from fossil energy use therefore remains a tale that is historically unfounded and agronomically erroneous[6]. Meanwhile, in Switzerland, political leaders have historically considered such large agricultural enterprises as more modern, and therefore, more effective for agricultural development[7].
Today, numerous researchers argue that labor – the third variable – is the cornerstone to combine production imperatives and environmental conservation and integration. They support the “re-peasantisation” of agriculture, by setting up small, diversified, knowledge-intensive farms that better conserve natural resources and resist climatic pressures[8]. Hence, the agroecological transition is intrinsically linked to the intensification of living labor, in Marx words, and the condition for reducing dependance on fossil energy and dead labor (i.e., farming machinery), as well as environmental externalities from our agri-food systems.
The future of Swiss agriculture: néo-farmers and their claim for access to land
Current land use policies – enforced by the economic and political agricultural framework – are paving the way to a Swiss agriculture empty from its farmers. This progresses by the swift disappearance of farms – an average of 2 to 3 a day in Switzerland[9] (labelled by some as “structural evolution”[10]). Where farmers used to retire, and the next family generation took over, today there are fewer children interested in farming careers and related lifestyles, which is why farmer’s land is absorbed by neighboring farms. Even though half of all Swiss farmers will reach retirement age in the next fifteen years[11] and only two-thirds of them expect their family to take over the farm[12]. However, the state and majority farming union refuse to address access to land and farming sector as a challenge for our common futures[13].
This results in a paradox: the number of students attending agricultural schools is increasing (largely due to the growing number of néo-farmers – who do not come from farming families[14]), economic, legislative and relational (e.g., lack of professional network) factors prevent these new stakeholders from setting up on their own farm. This renewed motivation to work the land represents indeed an unhoped potential for tackling the socio-ecological issues of food sovereignty, ecologizing agro-industrial systems, and transforming territorial development. Yet, despite their growing professionalism, time and resource investments, the farming projects of néo-farmers are often disqualified as ‘unrealistic’ and ‘utopian’ by the established farming community.
Utopias as a relational pathway: working the land amongst pre-established farming community
Based on a multi-year ethnographic fieldwork in the Canton of Vaud, Switzerland, in my doctoral dissertation I have documented the diversity of interests in working the land that néo-farmers embody and claim with their settlements, to show how these narratives collide, but also resonate, with existing and historical ways to be farmers. The frictions and complexities emerging from this territorial coexistence show how these embodied narratives – still depicted as impractical utopias – take on all their meaning in a relational perspective, politicizing previously sterile territorial development trajectories[15]. Meanwhile, my findings show that because néo-farmers have no prospect of taking over land through intrafamilial transfer their contribution to agroecological transition pathways is incompatible with the institutionally promoted model of Swiss agriculture[16]. Much rather, their presence and claims to experiment practical utopias is perceived as disturbing, especially when they advocate for facilitating access to land, revising agricultural training and denounce land concentration in the hands of a few landowners[17].
Meanwhile, as part of a relational utopia, néo-farmers tend to refuse conflicts and embrace the complexity to construct farming territory with established farmers[19]. Oftentimes, néo-farmers bear a diversity of visions and values of working with and relating to the land, which tends to help reclaiming agency that other agricultural actors feel they have lost[18]. They refuse to assign agricultural world to a minority whose knowledge is often misunderstood and devalued. Their settlements become hence a vehicle for dialogue between an urban world with growing environmental convictions and romantisized visions of rural areas, especially during an increasingly vocal agricultural sector whose social mobilizations are visible across Europe.
In my dissertation, I argue that the presence of atypical agricultural development pathways can be a source of new social dynamics, fruitful alliances and more effective farming models, both intra- or extra-familial. Through imaginations that accompany their arrival, néo-farmers force us to question extant trajectories of disappearance and structural concentration of farms conceived as the exclusive path to territorial development[20]. Thus, they refute the narrative that imaginaries of the future leaves no room for alternative interpretations of the past, opening new possibilities of engagement in the present. Through their day-to-day experimentation, they produce heterogeneous landscapes which break with the singular terms of the agro-industrial model.
Far from being bubbles of fantasized, atomized utopias, néo-farmers settlements unfold like a network of relational utopias under permanent construction, navigating with frictions and compromises within a territorial development policy. By bridging the rural and the urban, they allow us to project ourselves into desirable futures. Néo-farmers pose a decisive question to society: which narratives are fertile and need to be nurtured? The ones of a society fantasizing about its freedom from working the land? Or thoughtful ‘landings’[21], to use the words of Bruno Latour, offering the opportunity to rethink the normative presuppositions of land access as means of subsistence, experimentation and living environments in line both with food sovereignty requirements and planetary boundaries? In this spatial story, néo-farmers could be less the utopians than the revealers of the dystopian and dominant nature of agro-industrial intensification.
[1] De Schutter, O. (2011). Rapport du Rapporteur spécial sur le droit à l’alimentation. Assemblée générale des Nations Unies.
[2] van der Ploeg, J.D. 2008. The New Peasantries. Struggles for Autonomy and Sustainability in an Era of Empire and Globalization. London: Earthscan.
[3] Rockström et al. (2024). Planetary Boundaries guide humanity’s future on Earth. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 5, pp. 773-788.
[4] Calame, M. (2016). Comprendre l’agroécologie. Charles Léopold Mayer
[5] Mazoyer, M. & Roudart, L. (2002). Histoire des agricultures du monde. Du néolithique à la crise contemporaine.
[6] Calame (2020). Enraciner l’agriculture. Société et systèmes agricoles, du Néolithique à l’Anthropocène. Puf, l’écologie en question.
[7] Auderset, J. & Moser, P. (2018) Die Agrarfrage in der Industriegesellschaft. Wissenskulturen, Machtverhältnisse und natürliche Ressourcen in der agrarisch-industriellen Wissensgesellschaft (1850–1950). Köln: Böhlau Verlag.
[8] Netting, R. (1993). Smallholders, Householders: Farm Families and the Ecology of Intensive, Sustainable Agriculture. Stanfort: Stanfort University Press.
van der Ploeg, J.D. 2008. The New Peasantries. Struggles for Autonomy and Sustainability in an Era of Empire and Globalization. London: Earthscan.
[9] FSO (2023). Agriculture et alimentation, Statistique de poche 2023. Neuchâtel : Office fédéral de la statistique (FSO).
[10] Droz, Y. et Miéville-Ott, V. (2001). On achève bien les paysans. Genève : Georg Editeur.
[11] Zorn, A. 2020. Kennzahlen des Strukturwandels der Schweizer Landwirtschaft auf Basis einzelbetrieblicher Daten. Agroscope Science 88, 31.
[12] FSO (2016). Exploitations agricoles : gestion, formation, condition de propriété et reprise selon le canton.
[13] This is demonstrated by Federal Councillor Guy Parmelin’s response to the petition launched by the Association of Small and Medium-sized Farmers ‘Every Farm Counts – Stop the Disappearance of Farms Now’. Every farm counts – stop the disappearance of farms now’.
[14] OrTra AgriAliForm (2023). Évolution du nombre d’apprentis dans le champ professionnel de l’agriculture et de ses professions.
[15] Mathez, A. & Vandaele, M. (2024). La polyphonie des agricultures alternatives en Suisse romande. Développement durable et territoires. Under review.
[16] Contzen, S & Forney, J. 2017. Family farming and gendered division of labour on the move: a typology of farming-family configurations. Agriculture and human values 34 (1), 27-40.
[17] Vandaele, M. (2024). Le mouvement de retour à la Terre en Suisse romande : quelles possibles coévolutions entre monde agricole et mouvement néopaysan ? In : Granchamp, L. & Muramatsu, K. Retours à/de la Terre : Vues d’Europe et du Japon. Québec City : Édition Septentrion. Under review
[18] Droz, Y. et Forney, J. (2007). Un métier sans avenir ? La grande transformation de l’agriculture suisse romande. Genève: IUED.
[19] Forney, J., Vuilleumier, J. & Fresia, M. (2023). Constraint and autonomy in the Swiss “local contract farming” movement. In: Morrow, O., Veen, E. & Wahlen, S. Community Food Initiatives: A Critical Reparative Approach, pp.101 116.
[20] Barjolle, D., Chappuis, J.-M & Eggenschwiller, C. (2008). L’agriculture dans son nouveau rôle. Collection Savoir Suisse. Lausanne : EPFL Presse.
[21] Latour (2017). Où atterrir ? Comment s’orienter en politique. La découverte
