Les tensions de rôles liées à la distribution chez les agriculteurs de moyenne montagne

The role tensions at work of farmers are a very current subject that is still not very much dealt with in a context where the suffering of farmers is more than ever being questioned. The challenges of the ecological transition, the transformation of consumption patterns, the role of industrialization of production processes and the evolution of the structure of agricultural sectors (with the weight of distributors) lead to questioning the roles of farmers in the agricultural ecosystem and in particular those of small farmers. To ensure the survival of their activity, farmers are forced to take on new roles, particularly commercial ones in terms of distribution of their production and sales. This generates constraints that are a major source of tension for them. They do not always have the necessary resources (knowledge, skills, time, etc.) to cope with these changes. We combine the grid of role tensions (Katz and Kahn, 1967) with that of Hobfol's resources (1998, 2001) in order to characterize the tensions that farmers experience in carrying out their activity in order to cope with the need to adapt. The case study of a mid-mountain territory based on the analysis of the discourse of 22 livestock and dairy farmers highlights important role tensions generating important and permanent discomfort and stress linked to the need to act to ensure the sustainability of the farms. Our results allow us to better understand the mobilised resources by these situations of tension and to provide elements for imagining mechanisms for supporting and reducing these tensions. Collective strategies are an option to explore.