Farmers’ land strategies in peri-urban areas: the case of Angevin conurbation

Abstract

In a context of differentiation of agricultural worlds, we propose an analysis of the ongoing transformations and social conditions of these recompositions. We approached these questions from the point of view of land issues, based on observations made around a city in the west of France, Angers. Farmers, in their relationship to the land and to the locality, demonstrate four land strategies: "professional anchoring," "flexibility," "patrimonialization", and "hedonism." These strategies organize a question of land use which is unstable and results in competition and adjustment processes for access to land, both on the part of farmers and institutional procedures. These recompositions operate through different moments of debate, ranging from peer discussions, to local meetings with elected officials or inhabitants, to established negotiations between local authorities. Farmers have to deal with actors from outside their professional world, and paradoxically, rather than entering into a logic of withdrawal, we see a recomposition combining professional excellence and territorial anchoring.