In this episode, I’m joined by Tanguy Martin. Trained as an agronomist, Tanguy is also a long-standing activist engaged in crucial issues such as land grabbing, agroecology, and sustainable food systems, working at various scales from local to European.
Our conversation draws in particular on his essay “Cultiver les communs. Une sortie du capitalisme par la terre” (“Cultivating the Commons: A Way Out of Capitalism Through the Land”). In this book, Tanguy examines the fundamental role that land appropriation played in the birth of capitalism, as well as the destructive effects this logic continues to have on societies, ecosystems, and human rights. As a counterpoint, he explores the political potential of the commons—especially what it means to think of land not as property, but as a commons to be collectively instituted.
Hello Tanguy, to start, could you tell us a little more about yourself and your background?
I work and campaign around issues related to agriculture, democracy, and justice in farming and food systems.
In my professional life, I work for an organization called Terre de Liens, which focuses on preserving farmland and making access to land more equitable in France. And alongside that, I volunteer in various spaces — particularly with collectives like Engineers Without Borders (Ingénieurs sans frontières), Reclaim the Land (Reprise de terre), and the Collective for Food Security as Social Security (Collectif pour une sécurité sociale de l'alimentation).
To dive into the heart of the matter, I’d like to talk about a book you wrote, titled Cultivating the Commons: A Way Out of Capitalism Through the Land. First of all, what connection do you make between agriculture and the development of capitalism?
There is a strong link between land — especially farmland, given its role in food production — and the development of capitalism.
It’s fundamental, because one of the origins of this system lies in the enclosures: the process that began in the United Kingdom at the end of the 16th century, when landowners seized control of the land and gained the right to exclude peasants from it. Under feudalism — despite its many constraints — peasants had guaranteed access to land, and therefore to their own subsistence. The enclosures took that away: landowners could now evict them, and peasants had to sell their labor power in order to survive.
Capitalism thus emerged through an initial seizure of land in Europe, followed by a second in the colonies — what’s referred to as primitive accumulation: the formation of large estates that made capitalist exploitation possible.
In other words, capitalism rests on a double dispossession — in Europe and in the colonies — that separates workers from their means of subsistence. That’s one of its historical foundations.
To avoid the pitfalls of a “things were better in the past” narrative, I’d like to ask: in your view, what progress was made in the 20th century in the French agricultural sector, particularly in terms of land?
So, if I may, I’ll return briefly to what I said earlier, even though it doesn’t strictly concern the 20th century. I definitely don’t want to suggest that feudal systems offered exemplary forms of land ownership. It would be a mistake to believe that the Middle Ages were more favorable to land workers or to the general population than modern or capitalist periods — they weren’t.
The problems were different. We could go into that at length, but it’s important to avoid idealizing the past. There are interesting elements to take from the medieval period, but certainly not in the sense that “it was better before.”
That said, despite the harmful effects of capitalism on agriculture in the 20th century — particularly in France — there were also important social gains, especially after World War II. Some of these emerged from much older struggles, but they really took shape during that period.
One of the most significant was the 1946 reform led by the National Council of the Resistance (Conseil national de la Résistance): the tenant farming statute (statut du fermage). This statute offered strong protections to tenants of agricultural land. It guaranteed them access to land with low rents set by government decree, long-term leases, and greatly limited landowners’ interference in the tenant’s farming practices.
This curtailed the power of landowners, who until then had wielded considerable influence over rural workers. In the early 20th century, most farmers weren’t wage workers but self-employed. They didn’t answer to a boss, but they were still at the mercy of landlords who could keep them in constant precarity by charging high, unregulated rents.
The tenant farming statute, which is still in effect today, drastically changed this. Some legal scholars even describe it as a form of quasi-ownership, meaning that cultivating a piece of land gives a person stable usage rights for a modest price. It was a major step forward. If private property were abolished, the statute would no longer be necessary — but as long as it exists, this remains a highly relevant tool.
More broadly, over the course of the 20th century, agricultural unions gained power — to the point that some rural workers began co-managing agricultural policy. The idea that those directly concerned should help define the rules governing their work is key to any vision of emancipation through labor.
Unfortunately, these institutions were often co-opted and distorted by a corporatist and identity-based vision of agriculture, centered on the figure of the independent farmer. That’s a problem today, because nearly 50% of agricultural work is now done by waged laborers, who have virtually no say in how the sector is governed.
But despite these shortcomings, it’s fair to say that the 20th century in France saw meaningful social progress and the creation of institutions that break from neoliberal logic — institutions that gave concrete rights back to land workers.
Indeed, agricultural unionism in France is a complex issue, and I’ll likely explore it in another episode.
Why do you believe that regulating farmland solely through the market is inadequate for addressing the challenges surrounding it?
What we need to keep in mind is that with the enclosures in England came the idea that land could—or should—become a market commodity. In other words, something to be bought and sold like any other good. But from the perspective of human history, this is something very recent, almost anecdotal. And even today, it’s not a view that’s universally shared, even if it’s spreading globally.
What this logic implies is that land is just another commodity—something to be traded, but also something that can be destroyed. The concept of property rights, as inherited from Roman law, includes what’s called abusus: the right to destroy what one owns. And that raises a whole series of questions about the delusion of omnipotence that humanity has developed over the planet under capitalism and Western modernity.
Of course, this power isn’t absolute—there are laws that regulate it. But still, it forces us to seriously reflect on our relationship to land.
In a capitalist system, the market allocates resources based on what will maximize investment returns—in other words, what will generate the most profit. Applying that logic to land means assuming it should go to the most "productive" use—meaning the most economically profitable one.
But those uses don’t necessarily align with the fundamental needs of human beings. Today, the most profitable use of land is for housing. If we followed that logic to the letter, we’d convert vast swaths of land into suburban developments—and then we wouldn’t be able to feed ourselves anymore. And you can push the logic further: if this were applied everywhere, it would be the end of subsistence farming around the world.
So clearly, it doesn’t work. We need to regulate land use—to define how it’s allocated and what purposes it serves.
And we also need to recognize that multiple uses can coexist on the same land. Land is multifunctional: it can produce food, but it also has aesthetic value, can offer space for recreation, spirituality, carbon storage, biodiversity, and more. All of those are legitimate functions that can’t be reduced to economic profitability.
Even if we restrict land use solely to farming, a purely market-driven logic pushes us toward intensive monoculture, which may be highly profitable—but comes with massive social and environmental consequences.
Market allocation just doesn’t work. We need to invent—or rather rediscover—other ways of managing land. Anthropology and history are full of examples of land systems that don’t rely on the market.
Even Léon Walras, one of the founding figures of neoclassical economics—so clearly a supporter of markets—once said: “Land is a special case. It can’t be manufactured. Maybe it should be nationalized.” So even within a wide range of ideological traditions, we can and should seriously ask the question: is the market really the best way to manage land?
Is the idea of removing food from the capitalist sphere necessarily a leftist or even revolutionary idea?
We could dive into grand political theories, but if we simplify a bit and look at what’s happened throughout history and around the world since capitalism emerged, we can see that profit maximization—the core logic of capital—and the belief that the sum of individual self-interests will somehow lead to a kind of social optimum… it just doesn’t work. At least not in the food systems I know.
What has this logic produced, across time and place? Land workers are exploited, performing hard and undervalued labor.
Even if, thanks to or because of agricultural modernization—mechanization, chemical inputs—farmers today may have physically less grueling work than before, they still break their backs. And on top of that, now they’re dying by suicide at even higher rates. So no, it’s not exactly a success story.
From the standpoint of food access, we can see that even with the expansion of capitalist logic into agriculture on a global scale—especially since the 1990s, when agriculture was folded into free trade agreements—world hunger hasn’t significantly decreased.
And even in France, which is supposed to be a major agricultural power, lots of people—around 10% of the population—rely on food aid.
About one-third of people—so not just those living below the poverty line—skip meals from time to time for financial reasons.
So capitalism isn’t very effective at ending hunger, and it also comes with an astronomical environmental cost: it destroys biodiversity, fuels climate change, and disrupts water cycles.
In short, this system is clearly hitting its limits.
I think that if we look at things honestly and empirically, capitalism in the realm of food—and we could extend this to many other areas—does not deliver the results it promises.
So I would say this is a survival issue.
Now, is it necessarily a “leftist” issue? To me, it seems like the political right has become increasingly nihilistic—so yes, it’s mostly people on the left who are defending alternatives today.
But as Marx said, “the capitalists will perish in the icy waters of egotistical calculation.” The real issue today is that if we keep heading down this path, we’ll perish with them in those same icy waters. And that’s not great. So we’ll need to do something—and fast.
Now, is it a revolutionary idea? I don’t know. But to get out of this system, we’ll need to implement something radical—a real break from capitalism. The revolutionary path is definitely one to consider.
So, to sum up: no, it’s not necessarily a leftist or revolutionary idea—but getting out of this system will require leftist actions and revolutionary action.
Let’s continue with this question of transitioning beyond capitalism. Could you tell us what role the state plays—or could play—in the communalization of farmland? And in your view, what are the limits of state intervention?
Personally, I align with traditions that are more communist and libertarian—ones that aim to go beyond, or even abolish, the state. At least the modern bourgeois state, which remains a system of organized oppression by a minority, for a minority.
That said, in a very pragmatic sense, we have to acknowledge that large-scale revolutionary scenarios—the idea of the “grand soir”—aren’t exactly on the immediate horizon. Waiting around for them, or refusing any intermediate steps because they’re seen as futile or tainted, feels like a kind of romanticism.
And that kind of romanticism is often reserved for people who, frankly, aren’t doing so badly under capitalism and can afford to hold that position.
But a lot of people are suffering. We can’t tell them: “Just hold on through the pain until the kingdom of heaven arrives,” whether that kingdom is communist or Catholic. There’s this idea that “it’ll be better later.” But no. We have to act now.
In that light, the state becomes a site of struggle—a struggle for human emancipation, for ecology—and we have to engage in that struggle within the state. The real question is: Given the current legal framework and the state as it exists, can we build radical institutions—seeds of a post-capitalist society?
A classic example is social security. We managed to socialize access to healthcare—more or less. Medications are a bit more complicated because the pharmaceutical industry has wormed its way in. But for the delivery of care itself, even if doctors are well paid, we still operate within a socialized system.
So yes, it’s possible to create radical reforms that could outlive the state and survive beyond capitalism. The principle of social security—with a few adjustments—could absolutely serve as a foundation for a post-capitalist society.
The key is this: in certain power dynamics, the state can enable these kinds of reforms—and we should aim for them. Not with timid little reforms that maintain illusions, but with real political ambition, even before the state has been dismantled. The idea is to think about and build these institutions now—institutions that, like social security (though established by laws and ordinances in 1945–46), could endure beyond the state itself.
Of course, not under current conditions: since 1995, the social security budget has been folded into the state budget. But originally, it was made up of autonomous institutions, managed by workers, who took charge of healthcare.
So yes, we need legislation from the state—but once that’s in place, it’s possible to have institutions that don’t depend on the state to function and that could survive it.
That’s what the sociologist Erik Olin Wright calls “eroding capitalism.”
It’s one strategy for confronting capitalism—not the only one, and definitely not sufficient on its own—but it’s a real path: building revolutionary or proto-revolutionary political institutions that gradually make the state obsolete, or that can function without it.
I haven’t given very concrete examples yet—but we’ll get there. Especially when it comes to institutions that regulate access to land in France: I really believe some of them belong to these “already-existing” alternatives.
So that’s a little teaser—agriculture has its own examples too. It’s not just about social security.
Would you like to speak about how Soviet collectivization is often used as a scarecrow in debates around these topics?
The history of the USSR is often wielded to invalidate any idea of communism—as if Stalinism were the only possible version of it, and its failure enough to discredit all forms of economic collectivization. But that’s actually quite easy to challenge: the USSR—especially in the post-Leninist period—has very little to do with what many today understand by “communism.” And even when it comes to the kolkhozes and sovkhozes, very little is actually known. In France, few people seriously study them.
The usual line is simply: “People ate poorly in the USSR, so the system didn’t work,” without taking a serious look at what other systems—like capitalism—have produced.
Yet capitalism hasn’t solved the question of food security either, as we’ve already discussed. In fact, there are forms of nostalgia in several countries of the former Soviet bloc.
In Poland, for example, a segment of today’s populist movement draws on that sentiment: in the socialist economy, some rural populations had more direct access to resources and rights. They were left behind in the transition to capitalism, which created resentment—now exploited by the far right.
So, there are many ways to imagine the collectivization of land that have nothing to do with Mao’s Great Leap Forward or the Soviet model. Even the kolkhozes and sovkhozes deserve to be studied with more nuance: not everything about them was necessarily absurd, and their structure evolved over time. What applied in 1917 was already different by 1923, and again by 1956.
Using these historical counterexamples to shut down debate isn’t very useful.
What does French law allow today in terms of removing agricultural land from market logic?
There’s something particularly interesting in the history of French agriculture: we had our own version of “enclosures.” The transition from the feudal mode of production to capitalism in France can roughly be dated to the French Revolution. The regime of private property over land, for instance, was enshrined in the Napoleonic Civil Code of 1804. That very code is still in effect today. Article L544 defines private property in exactly the same terms as in 1804.
So that’s the starting point. What’s striking, though, is that French agriculture didn’t immediately enter into capitalism. Between 1804 and 1950, agriculture remained in a kind of proto-capitalist mode: peasants produced mainly for subsistence and sold their surplus in town. About 30 to 50% of the working population still worked the land. Capitalism made progress in industry, manufacturing, and mining, but much less in agriculture.
And it wasn’t the “invisible hand of the market” that changed this. It was the State—very visibly—which pushed French agriculture into capitalism after 1945, especially throughout the 1960s. Capitalism has an inherent drive to expand into all spheres of human activity, and at that time, it was decided that agriculture should also be integrated.
It was also an economic choice: if 30% of the population was working the land, that meant fewer people available to build cars or extract coal. The State wanted to free up this labor force and modernize farming.
To do so, they needed to bring a minority of farmers on board, by giving them power and rights. New institutions were created. For example, the statut du fermage (sharecropping law): landowners who simply collected rent had no interest in modernizing agriculture. So they had to be constrained in order to introduce tractors and chemicals into the fields—without triggering a massive peasant revolt.
In the 1960s, under the leadership of Edgar Pisani, a minister under De Gaulle who claimed ties to the Socialist Party, land access reforms were introduced. One example is the SAFERs (Land Development and Rural Establishment Society), institutions co-managed by the State and farmers’ unions. SAFERs can intervene in land sales, redirecting a sale from one buyer to another, and they also regulate prices. This is one of the reasons why farmland in France remains relatively inexpensive compared to other European countries.
A second lever is structure control, which plays a similar role in the rental market. Today, 60% of farmland is worked by tenant farmers rather than owners. To lease land, one not only needs the owner’s consent but also a farming license. This license is granted by a commission composed of union and state representatives: the CDOA (Departmental Agricultural Orientation Commission). Without going into too much detail, the key point is this: land access is partially removed from the market and regulated by public institutions.
These are what I call “already-there” institutions—structures that already exist and are, in essence, a-capitalist, or even in some ways anti-capitalist. One example is farmland leases: the price of fermages—that is, rent for farmland—is set by government decree at the departmental level. Landowners cannot set prices freely.
The right to rent farmland is regulated: it requires state and union approval. And crucially, you can’t sell a lease. There’s no pas-de-porte (key money): a tenant farmer cannot transfer or sell their lease to someone else. So access to land via leasing is not a market right.
Ironically, it’s precisely this framework—these social achievements—that allowed agriculture to be pulled into capitalism where the market alone had failed, because high land prices undercut already razor-thin margins. Farming in France doesn’t generate much value added.
So paradoxically, these social protections allowed for the transition: secure long-term land access made it possible for farmers to go into debt, buy tractors, and invest in their farms.
But that’s where the deal becomes Faustian: farmers went from being dependent on landlords to being dependent on bankers. In the end, that may not be such a great victory.
Could you tell us a bit more about the SAFERs — their strengths, the criticisms they face, and how they can serve as a model?
SAFERs, created by a 1960 law, are non-profit corporations with a public service mission. Their governance brings together representatives of farmers’ unions, local authorities, and civil society — which includes agricultural banks, the MSA (Agricultural Social Insurance Fund), hunters’ federations, as well as environmental and nature protection organizations.
These entities play a central role: buying and reselling farmland. But they don’t sell to the highest bidder. The price is set in advance, and buyers are selected based on priorities defined by the State — such as job creation or maintaining the family farming model. All candidates pay the same price, but SAFER decides who gets the land based on those public-interest goals.
It’s a system that departs from purely market logic. There’s no competition among buyers, no bidding war. The aim isn’t profit maximization — which underscores a powerful idea: land is not a commodity like any other.
Another distinctive feature: SAFERs have a preemption right. In the event of a private land sale, they can, under certain conditions defined by the State, step in and purchase the land themselves — then reallocate it. And they can even revise the price: if they consider it too high, they may not only override the initial buyer but also purchase the land at a lower price. It’s a mechanism for regulating the land market and curbing speculation.
Seen from this angle, the system is remarkable. And many peasant organizations — in Europe and beyond — view it as a powerful tool: an institution that enables land to be withdrawn from the grip of market logic.
However, this well-designed system runs into a deeper issue: the governance of France’s agricultural union landscape. SAFERs were created at a time when farmers made up a significant portion of the population. Today, they represent just 1.5% of the labor force, and barely 5% of the rural population. In other words, a social minority, whose exclusive decision-making power over agricultural and land-use policy is losing legitimacy.
In practice, agricultural representatives tend to adopt a very corporatist stance, assuming that farmers alone are qualified to decide what’s best for agriculture — and therefore, by extension, for the countryside, the landscape, the environment, the food system, the climate... without being accountable to society as a whole.
This stance is reinforced by a complacent State, which often lets the dominant farmers’ union dictate the rules. There are symbolic reasons for this: the figure of the farmer remains deeply valorized in the national imagination and is regularly invoked in right-wing, far-right, and conservative identity politics. There’s also a concrete balance of power: the farming sector has logistical leverage — tractors, road blockades, highly visible protests.
But this power is amplified by the State’s leniency. We saw it clearly in 2024: when farmers blocked roads with tractors to defend environmentally harmful practices, the police protected them. But when people protested pension reform or mega-reservoirs, they were repressed.
So there’s a double asymmetry at play: farmers not only have the capacity to assert force, but also a strong symbolic capital that guarantees them favorable treatment in politics and the media. Few other social movements benefit from such indulgence.
That said, the SAFER mechanism remains profoundly inspiring. But it needs two major reforms. First, its governance should be broadened. Today, key stakeholders — especially eaters and consumers — are not represented. Yet they should have a say in how land is used and what is produced, especially in the interest of sustainable, local food systems.
Second, the official objectives assigned to SAFERs must be updated. Despite the centrality of environmental issues in agriculture today, they are still barely factored into the land allocation criteria. It's urgent that SAFERs integrate ecology, biodiversity, and climate considerations into their mandates.
Lastly, it’s worth noting that the system of union representation in agriculture is currently heavily skewed — this is well documented, and I won’t go into detail here, but it’s a major structural weakness.
In short: the SAFER model may be problematic in how it functions today, but its structure is genuinely inspiring. It could serve as an example for other countries. In fact, international exchanges already exist through networks like La Via Campesina at the European level, or Access to Land, in which Terre de Liens participates.
For instance, during recent land reform processes in Scotland and Ireland, activists studied the SAFER model closely to inform debates and push for forms of land regulation that are more just, transparent, and aligned with the public interest.
Are there any countries that have attempted a radical transformation of their land regime?
Well, we’ve actually already talked about some. The enclosures in England were, in fact, a radical transformation of the land regime. It didn’t necessarily go in the right direction, but it was a profound land reform.
Another example is the French Civil Code of 1804, which marked a major turning point in land law by enshrining private property as an absolute, exclusive, transferable right enforceable against all. This too was a radical land reform.
These kinds of transformations in land regimes continue today under the pressures of neoliberal globalization. Institutions like the World Bank, the IMF, and various free trade agreements actively promote the commodification of land rights. In many countries — particularly in sub-Saharan Africa — a large share of land is still governed by state or customary systems. These two logics often coexist, creating friction. Liberal institutions of capitalist economies push for the liberalization of land regimes.
This dynamic has been — and continues to be — very present in sub-Saharan Africa, where it fuels numerous conflicts. Resistance to the commodification of land rights has often sparked political and social tensions. In Mali, for example, land issues have contributed to internal conflicts. One could also argue that Thomas Sankara was overthrown and assassinated, in part, because of his commitment to collective land rights and to an agriculture not fully integrated into capitalist logics.
In the public imagination, the idea of changing land regimes outside capitalism is often linked to Latin American agrarian reform. And here, of course, I’m echoing the title of your podcast, Tierra y Libertad, which — before it became a slogan of the Spanish anarchists — came from Ricardo Flores Magón, the Mexican revolutionary.
The agrarian reform that followed the 1917 Mexican Revolution is a defining example. It established a system of communal land, the ejidos, aimed at freeing peasants from the control of large landowners. While this system didn’t fully escape the reconstitution of elite power — some former latifundistas, no longer able to own land, regained control through agricultural trade — the reform was nevertheless a genuine attempt at peasant emancipation.
The ejido system was largely dismantled in the early 1990s. And that dismantling was concurrent with — if not a trigger for — the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, which remains one of the most important contemporary land rights movements.
This link between land regimes and political stability has been well analyzed by the geopolitical researcher Pierre Blanc, who shows that the more equitable land access is, the more politically stable societies tend to be. He gives the example of Brazil: in 1964, an agrarian reform project was on the table, and one of the forces backing the military coup was the large landowning class, afraid of losing its privileges.
That link is less relevant today in societies where agriculture involves only a very small portion of the population — such as in Western Europe or the United States. But looking at the broader sweep of the past two centuries, land access remains a central factor.
You advocate for the idea of a Social Security system for food. What would that concretely look like, and to what extent do you think it’s feasible?
The food system as it is organized under capitalism leads to the exploitation of farmworkers, but also, more broadly, of everyone involved in food supply chains. Supermarket cashiers, slaughterhouse workers, and factory employees don’t have empowering jobs — they’re not well-paid or socially valued. And at the other end of the chain, this system destroys ecosystems without ensuring either high-quality food or even a sufficient quantity for all. So, clearly, there’s a real problem.
Given that revolutionary ideas aren’t currently in the majority in society, we can ask: what can be done in the short term? One possibility is to draw inspiration from the model of Social Security as it was established in France after the Liberation. It wasn’t an exit from capitalism, but it did provide major social rights. It was a concrete transformation, a real gain, a relief for many.
The idea, then, is to extend that logic to create a Social Security system for food — a new branch of the Sécu (Social Security), dedicated to food, based on the three founding principles from 1946.
First, universality: everyone would have the right to a food allowance, paid without means testing. That would mean €150 per month, per person, for everyone living in the country. The idea is to build a sense of society around food, recognizing that eating well is a right.
Second, democracy: the products and producers eligible for purchase with that allowance would be chosen collectively by local food security councils, made up of citizens. These councils would decide together what counts as socially acceptable food — in terms of production methods, ecological impact, nutritional value, and symbolic or cultural importance.
The third pillar is economic justice: funding through social contributions, not taxes. The aim isn’t to compensate inequalities after the fact, but to socialize value creation from the outset. Because value doesn’t come from nowhere — it’s always the product of collective effort, of an organized society. So it should be up to society to decide how that value is distributed.
All this would allow us to set fair prices, ensure decent pay for food system workers, and make those prices affordable by giving people greater purchasing power. At the same time, it would steer production, since the democratic choices made by the local councils would determine which products are supported. It would be a way to organize part of the food system outside of capitalism, in a logic of socialization, even communalization.
This wouldn’t be a full exit from capitalism, nor would it mean eliminating markets. A regulated, limited market would still exist for approved products. But even so, it would already be a powerful tool for addressing real, immediate problems.
Is it feasible? Technically and legally, yes. There’s no need for a new constitution or to withdraw from EU treaties. Legal scholars have studied this proposal, and it’s entirely doable within the current framework.
The real challenge is building political power. That’s why a collective for a Social Security system for food has come together. It brings together many organizations working to raise awareness of the idea, make the case to the public, and turn it into a popular, obvious, unavoidable demand in the public debate.
It’s a bit like Social Security in 1946 — which didn’t come out of nowhere, but emerged from decades of struggles, experiments, and theoretical work. Even under the Vichy regime, some early elements of Social Security were put in place, like pensions for elderly workers, the first retirement schemes. Later, the National Council of the Resistance brought everything together to create the Social Security system.
Today, we’re seeing similar experiments popping up across France. In some places, local groups have raised funds to provide food allowances to small groups of people. These aren’t universal systems yet, but they allow us to test what works, identify obstacles and levers.
If we extend the analogy, these current experiments are like the mutual aid societies that existed in the early 20th century — modest but foundational structures.
This project could be established by the state tomorrow, but it could also survive the decline of the state and become a long-term way of organizing food systems in a post-capitalist society.
In the face of land grabbing, we see a wide range of tactics — from direct action, like that of Les Soulèvements de la Terre (Earth Uprisings) or ZADs (Zone to Defend), to more institutional approaches like Terre de Liens or policy advocacy. How do you assess the current cooperation between these different forms of struggle in France?
That’s a big question — a strategic one. It concerns everyone who is working toward a more emancipated and ecological society. It’s also one of the central questions facing the Left, in France and elsewhere.
We’re in a sort of in-between phase: for a long time, people looked to revolutionary counter-models — the Soviet Union, 1936 Spain for anarchists, Yugoslavia, or Maoist China. These large-scale experiments failed. We won’t go through a full tally of the good and the bad, but in the end, they didn’t succeed.
After the fall of the USSR and as China moved toward state capitalism, there were no longer any credible counter-models. The 1990s arrived with absurd theories about the end of the state — theories that history has largely disproven. The question then became: how can we make revolution in this context?
One answer was to organize on the margins, through small local initiatives. Two main currents emerged. On one side, a kind of romantic libertarianism: squats, collective living, inspired by Hakim Bey’s text “Temporary Autonomous Zone.” The idea was to create temporary autonomous pockets that could move if repressed. On the other side, the development of the social and solidarity economy — local currencies, small-scale experiments. The hope was that “the dawns would bring the revolutions.”
But twenty or thirty years later, we see that those approaches aren’t enough. They don’t overturn the system. The question now is: how do we scale up? How do we move from the margins to building real power?
The experience of the ZAD at Notre-Dame-des-Landes was a key moment. It initially followed that idea of a temporary autonomous zone. But the people who settled there built social and ecological ties to the land — they wanted to stay. They wanted to build something lasting.
They experienced autonomy in place, often in difficult, muddy, repressive conditions. Despite that, they chose to stay and build something sustainable. That meant forging relationships with local actors who were neither libertarian nor autonomous, but who supported the social experiment. They worked with elected officials, political parties, and unions. One symbolic moment was when the CGT Vinci (General Confederation of Labour) union joined the fight.
That was a clear attempt to move out of the margins and forge alliances beyond the ultra-left and political autonomy.
On the more institutional side — with pacifist, legalist activists, members of political parties — some were willing to collaborate with illegalist or revolutionary activists. This has become a key strategic arena for the Left in France today. The opposition between reform and revolution hasn’t disappeared, but it can be put aside in favor of a logic of coalition: even if we don’t share the same ideological horizon, we can agree on a common ground to fight for important causes.
This recomposition crystallized at the ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes and continues in other struggles. The movement Les Soulèvements de la Terre embodies this today. Despite heavy repression — proportional to their political ambition — they remain a catalyst.
You can see the same dynamic in more institutional initiatives that rely on legal action to fight unnecessary and imposed projects — like the law reauthorizing bee- and peasant-killing pesticides (neonicotinoïdes).
So yes, alliances are being built across very different political traditions. For example, reforming the SAFERs or the broader regulation of land access could benefit both squatters and legalist policy advocates.
The pressure against megabasins (large irrigation reservoirs), led by collectives like Bassines Non Merci (No Thanks, Megabasins), has made these water storage projects harder to build. That in turn strengthens political advocacy: when social opposition prevents construction, laws authorizing the projects become meaningless.
We’ve seen similar dynamics before — with GMOs. Long before Les Soulèvements de la Terre or the ZADs, GMOs had become so unpopular that it was difficult to push them through in legislation. There was a strong interplay between illegal crop destroyers and lawmakers trying to regulate the industry.
All of this points to a complementarity of tactics, and to the possibility of building effective alliances that shift the balance of power — even among people with very different ideological views.
You work for Terre de Liens. Can you tell us more about the mission and activities of this organization — and also about the limitations this model faces?
Terre de Liens (literally, "Land of Bonds") is a citizen-led movement focused on the preservation and sharing of land, especially farmland. The core idea is that land — particularly agricultural land — shouldn’t concern only farmers. Of course, those who work the land have a key role to play in deciding how it’s used. But land also touches on questions of food, health, the environment, and landscape. It shouldn’t be just the 1.5% of the population who are farmers — or only elected officials and urban planners — who decide what we do with our land. There’s a real need for civil society to have a voice on this issue.
That’s the founding principle of Terre de Liens. But once you say that — even if you do as much public education as you want — you very quickly hit a wall: the question of ownership. And the most effective way to address that question is to confront it directly and practically.
One of the approaches we’ve taken to preserve and share farmland has been to collectively buy land. The idea is to mobilize people to pool their time and money in order to purchase farmland together and lease it to farmers who want to start up using peasant agroecology or organic methods, with the goal of feeding local communities.
In practice, it creates a kind of solidarity: local residents choose to invest a bit of their money in this project rather than in a savings account, and sometimes we’re also able to secure some public subsidies to support the development of ecological agriculture.
Today, Terre de Liens has managed to purchase a bit over 10,000 hectares of farmland across France. That’s enabled the establishment or continuation of about 800 farmers on around 400 farms. That’s exciting, because it forces us to confront this fundamental question: when land is collectively owned, who really owns it? What are the conditions of that ownership? So on a small scale, we’re experimenting with what land commons governance might look like in the future.
Of course, it’s complicated. We haven’t escaped capitalism. We’re still accountable to capitalist systems, to the rules of bourgeois property law. So yes, our impact is limited. But still — this is proof that private property and profit maximization aren’t inevitable. People can organize differently, even within today’s society. And many people want to.
Right now, Terre de Liens engages between 40,000 and 50,000 people in France — including volunteers, donors, members, and folks who give a bit of their time or money. That’s no small thing. Not many political parties in France today can claim such a large and active base.
That said, when it comes to land, we’re still far from what’s needed. France has 28 million hectares of farmland. So 10,000 hectares is a drop in the ocean. That’s not enough to transform French agriculture on a large scale or fundamentally shift land ownership. We need to think about how to scale up, otherwise we remain anecdotal.
And of course, this work takes place within a capitalist economy, with dependencies on public subsidies and local governments that aren’t always aligned with the values of peasant or organic farming. That limits what we can do.
But what’s really powerful — and where I feel useful — is that this work enables a cultural battle. We’re showing that peasant and organic agriculture works. We often hear that there’s no alternative for farmers — that they can’t farm without pesticides or without going into debt. But we’ve managed to prove that other approaches exist, and that they’re just as effective, even under capitalism. They’re not less productive than the solutions offered by agribusiness or the FNSEA (Fédération nationale des syndicats d'exploitants agricoles, France’s dominant farming union). That’s deeply encouraging.
On the question of ownership too, we challenge a lot of deeply held assumptions: that private property is the only way to guarantee fundamental rights, or the most efficient way to manage a resource like land. And clearly, that’s not true. We’re showing it.
All of this allows us to support new farmers, to work with local governments that want to do the right thing — and there are quite a few of those — and to mobilize citizens around concrete, material action, not just ideological positions.
It also gives us the ability to go talk to lawmakers. We can say: “Look what we’ve managed to do. If you pass a few laws, this could be replicated.” That’s not necessarily the end of capitalism — and that’s not necessarily our immediate goal — but it could change things. It’s a foundation for policy advocacy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
But if we connect this kind of work with other forms of direct action, with non-corporatist peasant unions like the Confédération paysanne, or with other ecological and political movements, then we can begin to build a balance of power that, over time, could actually become transformative.
What do you think are the priority issues related to agricultural land that our elected officials should more actively promote in the political arena?
In France, we already have tools that help steer land use away from pure capitalist logic and profit maximization: the SAFER, and control over farm ownership structures…
What would need to be added to make these tools truly effective?
If we want land to become a commons, several key issues must be addressed. A commons, roughly speaking, is a resource democratically managed by a legitimate community, with the goal of preserving it and guaranteeing long-term access.
Applied to land, this means two fundamental things:
First, redefine who makes up this legitimate community. Today, in governance bodies managing land — whether SAFER or farm ownership controls — there is an overrepresentation of certain farmers, often to the detriment of the rest of the population, including other agricultural stakeholders. These bodies must be rethought to become truly representative.
Second, review how land is allocated and based on what criteria. Currently, decisions are largely disconnected from social and ecological needs. We need clear criteria that prioritize creating well-paid agricultural jobs, agroecological practices, and the food needs of local territories. Yet agricultural policies today are totally disconnected from food policies.
A concrete example: in Charente-Maritime, around La Rochelle, the Aunis cereal-producing region mainly produces wheat. The result? To consume vegetables, they have to be brought in from far away. Why only wheat? Because heavy investments were made in the port of La Pallice, which must be profitable through cereal exports, including to feed livestock on the other side of the world. The megabassines built in this region serve to irrigate cereal crops destined for export. This makes no sense, except from the perspective of profit.
What’s needed is to reconnect agricultural policies to food policies. There are already tools available to local authorities: the Territorial Food Projects (PATs). It is essential to reconnect land regulation to these PATs by directing land access based on the needs expressed by municipalities and inter-municipal bodies that want to relocalize food production.
This requires reforming the SAFER, farm ownership controls, and developing master plans that allocate land according to social, ecological, and territorial criteria. This can be done quickly with laws or decrees, without even having to leave European treaties or the current constitution.
In the longer term, all of this is part of a broader vision: to manage land and food as commons, outside of capitalism.
Have you seen peasant models or struggles in other countries that could inspire us in France? Can you give examples of movements in Europe or elsewhere that advocate for a reappropriation of the commons?
There is a very clear example today: the Landless Workers' Movement (MST) in Brazil. It’s not in Europe, but it’s clearly a model of organization. We are dealing with proletarianized peasants, excluded from access to land and subsistence, who organize from the ground up to take back land from large latifundia estates, to wrest livelihoods from capitalism, and to emancipate themselves through self-governed and self-managed agricultural work. It’s an extremely important movement.
Again, its level of subversion is visible through the repression it has faced, including political assassinations and strong state violence. So, it is also a deeply inspiring movement.
We’ve already touched on this a bit, but the Zapatista revolution in Chiapas also constitutes an extremely rich experience — without romanticizing or idealizing these struggles, they offer interesting pathways on collective land management and territorial sovereignty.
In sub-Saharan Africa, many peasant struggles aim to preserve customary regimes. I’m thinking particularly of ROPPA, a coordination of agricultural unions in West Africa, which defends non-liberalized access to land and opposes land grabs and concessions granted to agro-industrial multinationals. These are again inspiring mobilizations, led by African peasants. There are surely similar dynamics in East Africa, but I know West Africa better, where it’s easier to exchange with French-speaking comrades.
We can also mention very significant struggles in Madagascar, where political instability has been fueled by land grab projects aimed at producing food for populations in Asia — especially South Korean. Some of these struggles have been partly victorious. And in the Niger Delta, other mobilizations have also emerged against violent forms of land expropriation.
La Via Campesina is a coordination of agricultural and peasant unions worldwide — probably the only one as structured at this scale. It notably includes the Confédération paysanne in France, but also the MST in Brazil. This network succeeded in getting the UN to adopt a Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. This is a very institutional struggle, carried out in the realm of international law — a space still little occupied by social movements.
This declaration, along with the voluntary guidelines for land governance also adopted at the UN, have been used by peasant organizations in Romania and by Sami organizations in Finland to claim community rights over land. And these struggles have partly borne fruit. So, these are particularly interesting experiences to follow.
Finally, in Ireland, a recent land reform has recognized community rights of villagers to access land, in a country marked by concentrated land ownership and very capitalist agriculture, even in its extensive forms like sheep farming. In Scotland, a similar reform has enshrined some rights of village communities to land and their food systems.
It’s not perfect, but there are dynamics full of hope.
Thank you very much, that wraps up this interview on quite a positive note. These are victories worth celebrating, it seems to me — they give signs of hope, even though there is obviously still a lot of work to be done.
Would you have some resources to recommend — books, podcasts, articles — to better understand agricultural land issues?
So, these are not only resources specifically on land issues, but more broadly on agriculture and food systems.
One book that I find essential today, even if it’s not very recent, is Reprendre la terre aux machines (Taking Back the Land from Machines), published by L’Atelier Paysan, at Seuil in the Anthropocene collection. It’s a short, very evocative, accessible, and mobilizing text. It has been a vector of radicalization for many people regarding agricultural issues and also touches a bit on the question of food social security.
On that last topic, a little self-promotion: I co-wrote with Sarah Cohen a book titled De la démocratie dans nos assiettes – Pour une sécurité sociale de l’alimentation (Democracy on Our Plates – For a Food Social Security), published by Éditions Charles Léopold Mayer. It’s a small volume of about a hundred pages, quite digestible, which helps frame many key issues.
Within the collective Reprise de Terre, which I’m part of, we also produced a special issue of the magazine Socialter titled Ces terres qui se défendent (These Defended Lands). It offers a fairly broad overview of issues around land access, food, and the rights of subaltern groups, in France and internationally. It covers megabassines, women’s access to land, consideration of non-human life, and more. It’s dense — around 180 pages — but richly illustrated and enjoyable to read, a good resource to dip into.
Still with this collective, we have a small regular column in the political ecology quarterly Fracas, and we also collaborate regularly with the online magazine Terrestres, which I strongly recommend, not only for land issues but for everything related to political ecology. We will soon be publishing podcasts there, which will be distributed via the Spectre platform — a very nice podcast platform I generally recommend.
And finally, a big favorite: a podcast called Manuel Déterre, hosted on Blast, which focuses on agriculture and land access for women in France. They just finished their first season. It’s sensitive, subtle, precise, and extremely powerful. A small warning: the first episode addresses sexist and sexual violence in the agricultural world. It’s deeply moving. I recommend listening to it when you feel stable, or else start directly with the second episode and come back to the first later. In any case, it’s really essential to be informed about these realities.
Thank you very much, you made excellent recommendations—some of which I didn’t know. On my side, there’s a book I often recommend and really like: Terre et Liberté by Aurélien Berlan. It’s a very accessible essay, both easy to read and transversal in its approach to questions of autonomy. I really wish I had discovered it before diving into more technical texts because it offers a very clear entry point to sometimes complex subjects.
Absolutely, it’s a valuable resource.
There’s also Geneviève Prouveau, who is close to Aurélien Berlan, and who publishes regularly with very stimulating reflections, notably in her book Quotidien politique—it was fascinating. There’s so much to explore!