Diversity in family farming: Theoretical and empirical approaches to its many forms

The transformations occurring in family-based agricultural structures are raising questions in the academic and political worlds. The questions being asked span the history of agricultural representations over the last century. The ways of perceiving and representing the different forms of agriculture relate to these transformations. Family farming has acquired an international legitimacy but is presently being questioned by agricultural evolutions in developed countries, as well as in developing or emerging countries. The Sustainable Rural Livelihoods (SRL) approach enables a global comprehension to be formed of the agricultural entity as a constituent of an activity system that has become multi-sectorial and multi-site, relating to market and non-market regulations. The relative significance and the nature of the mobilized capitals led us to schematically present six organizational forms of family agriculture in New Caledonia, Vietnam, Mali, South Africa, France and Brazil. Lastly, a more generic characterization, which our proposed agriculture representation framework outlines, is presented and raises further methodological challenges. (Résumé d'auteur)