Peasant agroecological farms: drivers of rural development through generational renewal, employment, and social connections. The case of Terre de Liens farms in France

Over the last decades in Europe, farm numbers have declined and the renewal of farming generations has stalled. In France, the Terre de Liens (TDL) movement experiments with land-related solutions to foster generational renewal and a transition towards sustainable farming models. One of the tools used by TDL is farm acquisition through citizen investment. This paper aims to analyse the contribution of TDL farms, which are embedded in wider territorial dynamics, to rural development. Drawing on a mixed corpus of qualitative and quantitative data and leveraging a collaborative practitioner-academic analysis, the paper highlights three main ways in which TDL farms contribute to rural development: they are a gateway into farming for young new entrants without agricultural backgrounds, they adopt peasant agroecology models that contribute to the local economy and preservation of natural resources, and they catalyse social and territorial dynamics that redefine rural areas as places of innovation and regeneration. TDL farms participate in a rupture from industrialised and exploitative models of farming, by reinventing the ways in which farmers relate to production assets such as land and labour. This rupture can however be nuanced as the TDL model continues to grapple with farm ownership and farm capital issues, which bring into light the shortcomings of the broader regulatory framework to enable socially and ecologically sound rural regeneration.