Changes in property-use relationships on French farmland: A social innovation perspective

Land issues are a major constraint for resource management, whether it relates to urban planning, environmental protection or agricultural development. There is presently a proliferation of initiatives by a diversity of actors, that produce notable changes in terms of land tenure. A few studies have described some of them in France, without analysing the change mechanisms. Moreover, land tenure is often difficult to understand given its complexity and its multiple dimensions. Here, we propose an analysis of land tenure changes with the lens of property-use relationships (PUR), through a social innovation framework. This allows us to analyse the collective action at the heart of change. The analysis rests upon two case studies selected for their multiscale character, and as two different entries to scrutinize land changes: the “Terre de Liens” movement, a new actor stemming from civil society; and the “rural land lease subject to environmental clauses”, a recent authorized instrument of tenancy contract. These land tenure changes are important although circumscribed because they involve all actors’ spheres and scales and create new frameworks. These changes contribute to express societal demands through new lessor’s management right. Where the parties to the PUR share a common reference framework and the same agricultural development objective, the conditions set out in the PUR seem guaranteed. If they do not, a mutual acculturation process seems necessary – beyond the contractual terms – to enable a compromise between the management rationales of a protected area in one hand, and a farm on the other hand.