Yves and Jean-Luc went back to the origins of peasant agriculture in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais

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Titled Crossed perspectives on 140 years of changes in the agricultural worldYves Spriet and Jean-Luc Malpaux have just dedicated a memory on a subject that will fascinate those who want embrace the profession of farmer (1.5% of the active population), “its challenges and contradictions”. The two authors exercised the farming professionthe first in Valenciennois (Escautpont), the second in Cambrésis (Malincourt). Both aged 77, they are members of the peasant confederation.

Rediscovering the meaning of the farming profession

The time is no longer when the agricultural world represented 50% of the electorate, where 60% of women worked with their spouse, where only one face – conservative, unique, well-born – was shown to France, professors of agriculture and agricultural missionary priests beating the pavement or the harvest!

The 1980s gave way to agricultural development “green oil of the country”, to the diversity of situations and interests, to the pluralism of unions, “to living and working in the country to inhabit the earth in another way”, to sovereignty eating. The ten chapters of the work explain all these aspects, offering elements of analysis on the evolution of the relationship between agriculture and religion in France (1880-2020), Yves Spriet being a priest of the diocese of Cambrai. The regional observation, it should be noted, applies to the national scale, which makes the interest of very documented work, as close as possible to reality.

A social and environmental crisis

The two authors point out the relationship with life and the place of women in agricultural unionsrecalling the past of the natural order of things – “we obeyed” – to the peasant “actor, servant and leaven in the dough”, which shows the strength of the collective, of networks and of union.

“Today there are as many solutions as there are types of agriculture, we see that productivism has its limits and that a democratic issue is at stake with climate change and the loss of biodiversity”, affirmed Jean-Luc Malpaux during of the presentation of the document before a concerned public, in Raismes.

Opportunity for Jacques Dazin, president of the friendly association of members of the National Order of Agricultural Merit (AAMOMA) of the North of France, to present to Yves Spriet the Knight’s badge on which two intertwined hands are attached. Beautiful symbol of peasant agriculture.

By Ph. Courcier

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