Associations for the Preservation of Small-Scale Farming and Related Organisations

Summary

During the 2000s in France, the rapid development of “AMAP” (Associations for the Preservation of Paysan [Small-scale] Farming)— which are a sort of appropriation/adaptation of the North American Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) initiatives—can be seen as part of a wider trend towards consumers’ growing awareness of and reaction to the environmental and health risks linked to the drive for productivity in agriculture. This case study shows the strength but also the limits of these kinds of collective action. On the one hand, the emergence of AMAPs can be seen as an immediate and concrete response to this fundamental shared concern, and a very coherent one insofar as it can combine not only the protection of environment with that of health, but also the defence of small-scale farming with the interests of consumers, fair-trade with local production, activism with conviviality, and so on. But on the other hand, it can also provoke tensions and encounter limits, such as the definition of this action as solidarity versus charity, the relative absence of the lower classes, the lack of land and of local organic food producers, and the need to construct a supra-local movement in order to influence national or European policies.