Presentation short abstract

This article analyzes a village’s redistribution of municipal farmland and the green claims surrounding it. While such initiatives can challenge historical land inequalities, they remain constrained by structural factors that sustain environmental injustices for different groups of farmers.

Presentation long abstract

The agricultural sector both drives and suffers from environmental crises, placing it at the heart of green transitions. This article examines how local governments intervene in these transitions through land redistribution, focusing on a village in the French Pyrenees that has allocated municipal land to farmers as part of its environmental policy. The case unfolds in a context marked by a historical concentration of land in the hands of a few pastoral livestock farmers, a legacy of post-1950s agricultural modernization and Common Agricultural Policy subsidies tied to land area, which have contributed to demographic decline. These subsidies, justified through environmental rhetoric (grazing as biodiversity maintenance), have reinforced an export-oriented livestock model. At the same time, neo-rural arrivals have introduced alternative agricultural projects, such as vegetable production and short food circuits, framed as environmentally friendly practices. Competing green claims thus shape debates about who is legitimate to access farmland. This article analyzes how these claims informed the village’s use of the legal mechanism “biens vacants et sans maître” (ownerless properties) to recover and redistribute land. A participatory assembly of local officials and citizens decided which farmers could lease or purchase this land, often invoking “food sovereignty” as an environmental strategy. Drawing on an environmental justice lens, the article shows how this initiative reshaped local land relations and redefined whose green claims are recognized. While local redistribution initiatives can challenge land inequalities, they remain constrained by structural factors that perpetuate land concentration and systemically linked environmental injustices for different groups of farmers.