VertigO (May 2017)
Le pas-de-porte en agriculture, marqueur de la dérégulation foncière et de la financiarisation des exploitations
Abstract
Since 1946 and the integration of land lease in the French rural law, the « pas-de-porte », which consists in paying an entrance fee in order to access to land rent to the previous farmer, and eventually to the land owner, became illegal. Economic approaches show how this custom derives from a tension between familial logics and entrepreneurial logics inherent to the French agricultural politic and to farms’ management. We lack empirical studies though, that allow understanding the power relations at stake and the way this illegal fee is integrated in the accountability of farms, in order to consider regulation matters. This article aims to fill this gap. First, it presents the historical roots of this « pas-de-porte » and the transformation of its economic meaning within a more and more capitalistic context. Second, it describes the three-party relations that takes place between the landowner, the former and the new tenants ; it also analyses the role of middlemen such as « experts agricoles » and management consultants in the calculation of the value of the transaction and its integration in the accountability of the farms. Finally, the article shows how the evolution of the legal status towards corporations accounts for a more general evolution of financialisation of farms within which the pas-de-porte has greater value and is harder to regulate. The recent evolutions of the land policy reveal how hard it becomes to frame this financialisation movement.
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