#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #FRANCE #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) France, UCL AL #325 - ecology, 90.L'Atelier Paysan: breaking the chains of agro-industry (ca, de, it, fr, pt)[machine translation]

 L'Atelier paysan opposes agro-industry with an agro-ecological model and poses as

an alternative allowing peasants to reclaim techniques and machines without
contenting themselves with remaining a "harmless alternative"... ---- The Atelier
paysan cooperative observes that agro-industry deprives peasants of the
techniques and knowledge necessary for their work. It aims at the "generalization
of peasant agro-ecology, for a radical and necessary change in the agricultural
and food model". At the heart of its strategy: the reappropriation of
agricultural tools, machines and buildings by training farmers in wood and metal
work.

The current industrial agricultural model is insane. On the one hand, a third of
the inhabitants of a rich country like France declare that they do not eat what
they want. On the other hand, approximately 70% of farmers' income is made up of
national and European aid, half of them and they have negative income before
taxes and subsidies... and 14% have no income. , despite these subsidies!

A failed system
Industrial agriculture is a failed system; it does indeed allow an abundance, but
an abundance of products that are bad for health and of economic precariousness.
And it gets worse: between 2010 and 2017, the price of agricultural equipment
increased by 11.6%, to the point that farmers have to choose between going into
deep debt or using specialized companies to do the work for them. The average
indebtedness of a farm is now 193,460 euros, against 50,000 in 1980. The weight
of investments linked to machines is such that the whole production system must
be adapted in order to make them profitable.

Since the middle of the 20th century , the size of the plots has conformed to
machines, thus eliminating 750,000 km of hedges. Today, country roads are
sometimes not even wide enough for new models. To optimize the use of equipment
and avoid having to invest in too many different machines, farms have
specialized: monoculture has become the norm.

Machines are a brake on the diversification of production workshops, which is
essential for making agricultural systems more respectful of the environment and
richer in biodiversity. Yet the public authorities and the dominant agricultural
unions are stubborn in a technophile faith. The "Agriculture and innovation 2025"
plan allocates more than 10 billion euros to the development of digital
technologies, robotics, and biotechnology.

Own the machines
L'Atelier paysan wishes to take the opposite view of this model and proposes to
strengthen the autonomy of farms by allowing farmers to reclaim old techniques
and know-how, by modernizing them and adapting them to the economic constraints
of the farms.

Farmers who train with the collective have the possibility of limiting the cost
linked to the machines: these are not oversized and are low-tech, designed with
simple, robust and easy-to-repair techniques. The cooperative identifies peasant
innovations and creates a framework for exchanging practices. The machines are
thus designed or adapted to meet the needs of agro-ecological farms. The plans
are distributed under a Creative Commons license, so that the creations can be
appropriated for free by anyone.

Work is also carried out in conjunction with initiative centers to promote
agriculture and the rural environment (Civam) on gender issues so that peasant
women can design and manufacture tools adapted to their morphology, weight
standards and size of the tools on the market are often unsuitable. Beyond
activities that now improve the autonomy of farms and the daily lives of
peasants, the Atelier paysan carries out a political project detailed in the book
Reprendre la terre aux machines. Manifesto for peasant and food autonomy.

Farmers who receive training at the Atelier paysan have the possibility of
limiting the cost linked to the machines: these are not oversized and are
low-tech designed with simple, robust and easy-to-repair techniques.
Go on the offensive
With the objective of setting up one million peasant men and women in the next
ten years in France, the Workshop sets out three axes to be carried out jointly
to achieve this.

First, reconnect with popular education, open spaces for mutual education between
peers everywhere and all the time, promote a relationship to knowledge other than
bourgeois culture, forge knowledge that is useful for collective action.

Second, continue to develop alternatives and make them more combative. And
finally build the balance of power against the capitalists, because the
transition from industrial agriculture to peasant agriculture will not be
conceded by the political and economic elites without the emergence of a social
movement, it will be conquered by struggle or it will not happen.

There are three policy avenues for this:

1. The setting of minimum entry prices in France to fight against free trade and
competition between exhibitors at the international level.

2. The socialization of food and agricultural production: the basic idea is to
allocate to each citizen a monthly budget for food chosen collectively, based on
social contributions.

3. Oppose aggressively the development of robotics, fight for technological
de-escalation, like the struggles against GMOs.

The Atelier paysan claims a perspective of social transformation: "We do not want
to be an 'alternative' that is certainly solid and consistent, but harmless in
the face of competitive and destructive productivism. It is high time to get out
of this comfortable and perfectly integrated margin, from this trendy niche of
alternatives that will only ever serve the privileged. » [1]

Pauline (UCL Brest) and Eric (UCL Livradois)

AUTONOMY OR AGRICULTURAL SOVEREIGNTY ?

To understand the stakes of the alternatives to the dominant agricultural system,
it is necessary to explain the notion of autonomy. It is often understood as the
capacity for peasants to freely make their economic and technical choices.
L'Atelier paysan extends the definition to all political and collective choices
related to food production by requiring collective deliberation for technological
choices, the distribution of land and food and the collective takeover of our
material conditions. of existence.

When Macron or the FNSEA (the majority agricultural union, promoter of industrial
agriculture) do not hesitate to appropriate the slogan demanding food or economic
"sovereignty ", they are in fact referring to the resumption of control over
certainagricultural and commercial levers in international competition, a project
far removed from the claims of the international movements for the defense of
peasant agriculture which forged this concept.

Against this semantic recovery, we prefer to speak of "autonomy" rather than
sovereignty because it etymologically carries an idea of superiority, the
sovereign being the one who is above all the others, where the concept of
autonomy refers to the fact of to give oneself one's law, therefore more to an
effective democracy.

To validate

[1]The Peasant Workshop, Taking back the earth from the machines, Seuil, 2021.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?90-L-Atelier-Paysan-briser-les-chaines-de-l-agro-industrie
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