Essential farmers? Views And Challenges Through Role Strain Perceived By Organic Farmers[Les agriculteurs essentiels ? Regards et enjeux à travers les tensions de rôle perçues par des agricultrices et agriculteurs biologiques]

The unprecedented health crisis we have been through has highlighted a unique category of women and men: essential workers (Lazar et al., 2020). Among these actors, farmers occupy a special place. Indeed, the tensions observed during the first lockdown highlighted the centrality of their work, between issues of productive sovereignty (Cohen, 2020; De Boissieu, 2020; Dumont, 2020; Gaillard, 2020), place of a local food offer, accessible and available (Neveu, 2020; Rastoin, 2020) and environmental challenges. Covid-19 has put our society in front of the limits of a productivist and intensive agricultural model that has become obsolete, and in this context, organic farmers are an interesting population for several reasons. While it enjoys a generally positive social perception and has benefited from renewed consumer interest (FranceAgriMer, 2020), it is not free from criticism, such as the supposed impossible access to all (scarcity) and for all (high cost) of its products (Kressman, 2021). The analysis of the discourse of these committed actors highlights many role strain (Katz and Kahn, 1966; Perrot, 2000; Djabi and Perrot, 2016; Arras-Djabi and al., 2021), inviting us to consider the agriculture we want at the dawn of a post-covid society. It also questions our expectations and paradoxes of organic farmers.