Contenu du sommaire : Nouvelles ruralités en quête d'autres développements

Since the 2000s, the agricultural sector has once again become a central theme of development debates. According to the dominant, liberal, and “modernizing” thinking, the peasantry is doomed to disappear. But, since the 1990s, more and more family farmers claim to be actors of alternative trajectories of agricultural and rural development, in collaboration with other concerned citizens, including engaged researchers. These movements have not yet resulted in a broadly unifying political project. A key challenge will be to link up initiatives promoted by local communities and new public policies aimed at sustainable agricultural development.

The dominant approach to agriculture in the North and South for more than half a century, in theory and practice, has been that of a sectoral approach focused on modernization through an ever greater increase of productivity and the liberalization of exchanges. The most visible result of this approach is the widespread agrarian and urban crisis, which is now at the heart of global accumulation. A paradigm shift is required to overcome the insuperable contradictions and bottlenecks of modernization, and to restore agricultural and rural issues—and the farming community in general—to their place at the core of a development approach through the construction of sustainable “territories of life” in the South and the North.

Political agroecology refers to both a radical social movement, a scientific discipline, and a set of practices. At the same time, the notion of rurality is subject to a theoretical renewal. Both perspectives share a common interest in autonomy, diversification, and self-sufficiency matters. Based on a field study in Nicaragua, we argue that the main insights of a communitarian approach to new rurality are relevant to the building of a comprehensive framework for observed agroecological practices.

The role of cultural and leisure practices on the migration dynamics of rural youth has been neglected. Yet it is as important for those who leave because of the deficiencies and permanence of a certain rural culture as for those who choose to stay or return. These young people are motivated by a renewal of practices that reinforce their local commitment. In the territories studied here, cultural practices contribute to recompositions by influencing the way of living of these young people. The analysis of the practices of these young people allows us to understand how each individual represents him/herself and tries hard to consider him/herself as an inhabitant of a rural space. These individuals contribute to a kind of development that takes into account the cultural dimension of being in the world suggested by southern family farming.

In family agriculture, a permanent workforce is mainly provided by family members. We raise the issue of the impact of global demographic trends on the evolution of family agriculture in Latin America. Along with an almost “Lewisian” path of agricultural development, this region, contrary to other developing areas, is undergoing a rather major shift in its demographic transition, which impacts family structure and fecundity rates. These trends are affecting rural areas in a considerable number of countries and can change the composition of family units, which leads to a questioning of the future durability of family agriculture in the sub-continent.

For a long time, multiple job holding has been criticized, but nowadays this strategy is being adopted by an increasing number of farmers. This paper focuses on the motivations of off-farm workers living in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais (NPdC) region and proposes a typology. Our results show that multiple job holding is often a long-term strategy that enables farmers to increase their income and to combine different ambitions. Farm inheritance is another important consideration that sometimes motivates “managerial” multiple job holding, where farmers are not heavily involved in working on the farm. We also found that when setting up a business in agriculture, many farmers do not consider multiple job holding as a long-term strategy but, afterwards, their motivations change, and for most of them (but not all) multiple job holding becomes a sustainable and even rewarding choice.

Competitiveness is an obsession regardless of the level of development. African countries are particularly sensitive to the phenomenon due to diversification requirements and the needs arising from demographic growth. The Foundation for Studies and Research on International Development (ferdi) has set up an Observatory of Sustainable Competitiveness (ocd) that covers the whole of Africa based on three dimensions: vulnerability, attractiveness, and price competitiveness. The article introduces this observatory and situates its interest in dealing with the renewal of Côte d'Ivoire.

This paper introduces an analysis of the relationships between rural social structure and structural transformation, with an application in Madagascar, in Itasy. The livelihoods class structure and the moderate prosperity class are used as an analytical framework to study the households' socioeconomic trajectories. Results show the deep heterogeneity of the social space in Itasy and the diversity of the ongoing rural and agricultural transformations in this region. They highlight the reality of a rural multi-speed society that requires the adoption of inclusive policies adapted to each household's profile.