“Declining yields, ecological pressures, growing demand and regulatory requirements... You have to think globally even if you can’t progress in every direction at once!” Hugo Collard, a young cooperative farmer in the Marne region, sums up the situation perfectly.

As they seek to solve the productivity/yield/ environmental impact equation against today’s background of increased and increasing uncertainty, farms and farmers are looking for new ways to adapt. François Purseigle, a specialist in agricultural sociology and economics and co-holder of the GERMEA chair funded by VIVESCIA (see inset), sees a trend towards significant fragmentation in farming land. Three distinct trends are at work here: rationalisation, new work organisational structures and income diversification. The first reason for this trend is demographic. In 2020, INSEE (the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies) reported fewer than 400,000 farm managers, representing just 1.5% of total employment in France. Between now and 2026, 50% of farmers will have reached retirement age, and almost a third of them will have no direct successor. The direct consequence of this demographic trend is the consolidation of parcels. So as the number of farms reduces, those that remain are growing on the same amount of land.

Although farming is still a family affair, it is becoming less and less of a hands-on business for family members, as farms make increasing use of full-time employees, outsourcing and subcontracting. Benoît Lamy, who has been farming at Maizières-la-Grande-Paroisse in the Aube region since 2003, is a good example of this trend. He manages his own farm and runs an ETA1 that provides services for six other farms covering a total of 930 hectares within a 25 km radius, “anything from 100% to just harvest time, depending on the owner’s profile”, he explains.

Another development is the change in the legal status of farms. Nearly 60% of farm managers work in company structures as farmer-partners), and a minority of those are employed by several companies. The way work is structured and resource optimisation are also becoming major issues. “Although it remains true that partners are often family members, it is no longer as much about the family working for the farm, as the farm working for the family and the management of its assets”, continues François Purseigle.

Dominique Marisy, a cooperative partner in Magnant, is an excellent illustration of this trend, because as well as being a farmer, he is also an agricultural contractor and shareholder in the family hotel and restaurant... So Dominique’s days are pretty full! He was just 19 when he took over a 180-hectare arable farm. Ten years later, he invested in a hotel and restaurant with his parents, two brothers and sister “The Board members are my parents, their four children, my sister, who lives with her husband on his farm, my two brothers, their wives and me”, explains Dominique. When his parents retired, he also took over the family farm, EARL Du Duizin, as well as SARL Marisy ,“a contract farming business that owns the equipment we use to provide services for our three farms and the hotel grounds, as well as for other farms” which he runs with his brother Bruno, who also has his own farm.

Three main types of strategy - which may well coexist within the agricultural enterprise - are emerging: the introduction of new roles, such as management controllers, crop managers and mechanics; the outsourcing of certain activities to specialists in some or all aspects of the farm in order to refocus on developing expertise in other aspects of the business; and the creation of groups of farmers to deliver effective responses to a range of challenges. As a result, agricultural production is gradually becoming another part of the service economy, with new arrangements for the joint management of farms, new networks that facilitate refocusing on high value-added activities, and full outsourcing to specialist cooperatives and/or service providers to access cuttingedge expertise, complementary skills and new technologies.

In Saint-Benoît-sur-Seine, Éric Hamot is part of a harvest pooling arrangement: his 190 hectares are included in the total of 900 hectares belonging to six neighbouring farms within a 10 kilometre radius of each other. In 2007, Éric got together with five colleagues from the CUMA2, and made the decision to structure his business as an SEP3 as soon as this legal status was introduced in France. Crop rotations, recommendations on no-till techniques, production resources and products are shared up to the gross margin line.

Since he converted a disused barn into a function room at farm headquarters, Eric has come to appreciate this solution even more: « We’re never short of people at harvest time. Most importantly, we work together to mitigate weather-related risks using an optimised equipment fleet, regardless of whether our own land is first or last to be harvested».

Olivier Yverneau had two goals when he returned full time to the family farm in 2016: to improve resilience and to optimise the farm's finances. So he joined forces with his neighbours to share the cost of agricultural machinery. They then formed their own agricultural contracting business, which now employs two people. “Right from the outset, we decided to go the whole hog with this arrangement. So we keep our own crop rotations, choose our own inputs and sell our own grain, but we pool our yields and optimise our organisation by growing our crops together as if we were a single farm”.

Managing an agricultural enterprise today is all about surrounding yourself with the right people, and understanding how to delegate, manage employees, measure risks and anticipate future developments when making major decisions. These are significant challenges, where even thorough technical training and detailed knowledge of the balance of power and bureaucracy are not enough. You also need to be open-minded, skilled in communication and convincing... The young generations now committing themselves to taking over family farms understand all of this. Often overqualified and having already had successful careers elsewhere, they aspire to playing their part in making change happen, but see the value of their work, production and company from a very different perspective. Not to mention the desire to protect both family and business..