Les jeunes agriculteurs des années 1960 et les lois d'orientation et complémentaire

Young farmers in the 60's and the Agriculture Acts - During the 1950's a new generation of young farmers was active in attempting to «r build a more human world ». They accepted the idea of the necessary and inevitable decrease in the number of farmers, but they wanted farmers to be in control of the land and of their production, and to have responsibilities, for they were above all afraid of being wage-earners. Their desire was to have a hand in political decisions, and when taking part in union activities, they would have liked industrial trades unionists to follow a similar path but industrial trades unionism always refused workers' participation in economic policy-making. By a lucky chance, there was on the one hand a young farmers movement that had a new idea of economic policy and on the other, from 1958, a new political team in power, anxious to see farming brought up to date. This led to the Agriculture Acts. But these acts are also marked by other schools of thought and other professional organizations. Consequently the texts disappointed the young farmers' hopes particularly as far as land tenure was concerned. Subsequently many other clauses in the act were not applied or were gradually modified both concerning land tenure and the disposal of production. In the end it is probably the IVD that has had the greatest effect. Those who were young farmers at the time feel they have served the public interest by enabling France to become a great industrial country as well as a great agricultural country. But, for their humanistic conception of labour to be adopted not onTy in the farming community but also in non-agricultural activities - to give them peace of mind a political evolution that the balance of power in our society has prevented would have been necessary. The political parties were too old fashioned. Only the founder of the Fifth Republic facilitated the integration of the rural world in political and economic life.