Les groupements agricoles d'exploitation en commun 10 ans après

In spring 1976, ten years after the first of them were set up, the Groupements Agricoles d'Exploitation en Commun (GAECs), the most perfected form of group farming numbered about 6000, employing almost 25000 active farm workers, 15000 of whom are partners and 3500 full-time employees. On an average GAEC, 4.1 workers farm 87 hectares, i.e. 21 hectares per person, a figure which proves the concentration of this form on association in the middle range of farmers. Their recent evolution is marked by a developement of family GAECs, particularly the GAECs made up of a father and one son (27 % of all GAECs at the end of 1975). This form helps to solve the problems posed by the division of the estate on the father death because of the vast sums of capital invested, in the interests of the son. The GAECs formed by the amalgamation of farms are decreasing relatively but are increasing steadily in absolute figures, by 12 % per year. Moreover the number of « labour contributions », partners without capital contributing only their labour, is still very small. If the present situation is compared to the objectives laid down by the law (1962) - maintaining in the GAECs the family nature of the farms for which this system was intended ; putting labour on an equal footing with capital in the status of the partners - discrepancies are visible. There is too great emphasis on the first of these objectives, too little on the second, and this reflects the constraints imposed by the social and economic system on the setting up and development of the GAECs. Nevertheless by transgressing the taboos of capitalism represented for farmers by the individual use of land and stock, by giving greater importance to labour (and even sometimes to family needs) in comparison with capital in the payment of the partners, the GAECs in their most personal forms contain the seeds of a new society in which it is to be hoped labour will replace capital.