La politique des plans de développement en France. Des principes avancés à la réalité des faits

Initiated in France in 1974, development plans are now instruments of EEC's structural policy defined by Sicco Mansholt in 1968. Although they are slowly settling, development plans constitute in some departments the main instruments of farms modernization policy. Concrete research about their settling in some departments shows the decivise role of the Credit Agricole in the acceptance of beneficiary farmers, through repayment abilities and financial guarantees required. These requirements are implying a high initial standard of development, meaning a bigger initial area and a higher technical level in beneficiary farms than in the others. Yet the importance of investments incurred by plans (particularly rearing buildings), and their resulting financial implications, require ambitious technical and economical ways (work productivity is doubled) which are not easy to fit up. So, we can't say that plans will be carried out well, even if farmers often work much more than planned. Concurrently, smaller farms, lowering their sigths, are checking at their development, because of reduction of State assistance, meaning an out of plan assistance less interesting than before. Will this concentration of resources upon a restricted number of making plans farmers enable agriculture to reach aims of income equality and adjustment with the market proposed by EEC's agricultural policy ? Probably not, and the only tangible aim which seems to be reach to-day is the increasing of agricultural production and work productivity.