Animation et développement micro-régional en milieu rural français

Advisory bodies and micro-regional development in France country districts - This paper hopes to provide an introduction to the problems of advisory bodies and micro-regional development from two points of view : — that of a historical outline of the phenomenon in France ; — that of a comparative analysis of two methods of agricultural development. A. The emergence of advisory bodies and development in France. 1 - Its antecedents : the cultural-social life there has always been in village communities ; the cultural activity of the Foyers Ruraux and the JAC. 2 - Advice and Extension-work in Technical Modernisation (1950-1960). In the productivist post-war climate the farmers organised themselves in technical groups, with many, varied, new ideas, to spread technical progress and the modernisation of equipment ; they counted on the success of these pioneer groups to make farming progress, if not to revitalise the countryside, but often achievements were only individual. Regional development remained merely a principle, with a few improvised examples of decentralisation and « Expansion Committees » with no influence on farming. Development consisted in modernising agriculture, in equiping the countryside ; extensionwork was a simplified means of teaching technological innovation. 3 -Advisory bodies in socio-economic organisation (1960-1966). At the moment when extension-work was being established, economic preoccupations made necessary a vast project for the reform of the structures of production and marketing, by means of economically directed farmers' union advisory bodies. The realisation of the disparities in growth encouraged the farmers' organisations to call for a régionalisation of assistance to farming. The economic development policy led to a certain administrative decentralisation, to the development of depressed areas, at the same time as urban districts became aware of the necessity of providing more equipment and giving life to local areas. Some rural areas organised themselves but on the whole -this increased animation consisted in fostering economic organisation and professional action in isolated branches. 4 - Advisory bodies in regional development (1966- 1973). Farming — its autonomy and homogeneity challenged — tried to find reasons for optimism among the other rural occupations. The authorities would like to equip and develop the space at their disposal that is in ever greater demand, and to revitalise local societies and regional farming in the midst of a civilisation in search of a new way of life. Side by side with technical advice, economic and social organisation, advice on micro- regional development is just beginning either by means of action by the farmers' own organisations or by means of surveys and advisory bodies concerned with rural planning.