Frontiers - An intensive and collective style of farm work

An intensive and collective style of farm work that enables the agroecological transition. A case study of six French farm machinery cooperatives

Special issue from Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems coordinated by IAWA members

The higher intensity of labor observed in many agroecological farming systems has been little studied by the scientific community, especially in terms of work organization. Narrative interview research concerning 34 farmers in 6 French farm machinery cooperatives, on the basis of the farming styles framework, allows us to highlight a specific style of farm work conducive to the agroecological transition. Farmers members of these cooperatives have developed a long-standing reliance on peer-to-peer cooperation, gradually shaping a labor-intensive and collective style of farm work to make their conventional farming systems viable. They have then remobilized with relative ease the structuring basis of their initial organization of work, i.e., labor intensity and peer-to-peer cooperation, to develop agroecological practices.

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© 2022 LUCAS and Gasselin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Modification date: 23 May 2023 | Publication date: 15 August 2022 | By: Priscila Malanski