Presentation short abstract

This paper investigates the agrarian question in France through the rise of a new union actor, the Coordination Rurale, whose civilizational and populist discourse challenges classical class cleavages.

Presentation long abstract

Debates surrounding the agrarian question of capital have largely faded in France as agriculture became integrated into the capitalist industry. This theoretical distancing followed C. Servolin and H. Mendras’ ruralist theses in the 1970s, blurring cleavages between heterogeneous farming classes and framing farmers as one group with shared interests, contrasting Bernstein’s approach (Bernstein, 2006; Morena, 2024).

The 2024 European farmers’ mobilizations, particularly against the EU-Mercosur FTA, witnessed the rise of a third union actor in France and renewed academic attention to agrarian studies. The rapid growth of the Coordination Rurale (CR), from controlling three Chambres d’Agriculture in 2019 to fourteen in 2025, positions the union as the main challenger to the dominant industrial-agriculture union FNSEA, often described as co-managing agricultural policies in France.

Although claiming political neutrality, the CR has been associated with far-right rhetoric and leaders, including several cadres elected as MPs with the Rassemblement National. Its strategic use of the word paysan is embedded in a broader “civilizational” discourse that frames farmers as the guardians of “French civilization” (Purseigle, 2010). This rhetoric resonates in a political landscape where civilizational narratives have gained significant ground.

The CR’s heterogeneous membership, spanning smallholders and large bourgeois farmers across diverse French départements, complicates its ideological positioning (Laferté, 2021). This paper examines whether and how the CR has managed to transcend class cleavages through a populist and civilizational discourse. Drawing on discourse analysis and electoral mapping (Mayer 1992), it explores the union’s social base and implications for re-examining the agrarian question in France.