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This article aims to unravel underlying reasons for the enigmatic outburst of farmers’ fury that swept large parts of Europe in the autumn of 2019. It does so by focussing on the Netherlands where the upheaval was particularly striking. Farmers’ resentment against ‘agribashing’ was a common theme in the many protests. This refers to, and simultaneously delegitimizes, all critiques of the current organization of farming and the unequal international patterns in which it is embedded. The article argues that the currently emerging farmers’ movement basically represents a regressive populism. It ignores the many-sided crisis of agriculture (related to ever increasing use of nitrogen, pesticides and energy that contribute to the climate crisis and loss of biodiversity) and the politico-economic processes and unequal power relations underlying this. Although this movement creates many smoke screens, it is essentially fighting for the reproduction of the same order that makes a substantial contribution to these multiple crises. As international comparison shows, this new form of right-wing, rural populism reflects the degree to which entrepreneurial agriculture has internalized the logic of capital: it needs ongoing expansion, both for material and symbolic reasons. Peasant agriculture could provide a much needed counter-image to this. In practice, though, it is highly segmented and dispersed and is in urgent need of a new unifying device.

En Argentine et en Uruguay, à côté des agricultures de type familial se développent des formes associatives de production qui réunissent les ressources (foncier, moyens financiers, sous-traitance, conseil agronomique) nécessaires à toute campagne agricole. La gestion fine de ces actifs, confiés par leurs propriétaires à l’association, repose sur une organisation en réseau et sur la pré-dominance de logiques d’efficience financière. Les acteurs de ces formes associatives, mais aussi les producteurs capitalisés déjà établis, qui louent des terres à proximité ou à distance de leurs exploitations, ont des pratiques qui modifient leur relation aux espaces ruraux et au foncier. Ainsi une agriculture entrepreneuriale différente émerge, qui atteste un ancrage territorial local évolutif, des liens renforcés avec les centres urbains et un certain détachement vis-à-vis de l’activité agricole à proprement parler., Cooperative Farming and Agriculture in Argentina and Uruguay: at the Crossroads of Territories and NetworksAlthough traditional family farming remains common, the agricultural sectors of Argentina and Uruguay have changed significantly in recent years, largely as a result of the emergence of a new form of cooperative farming incorporating all the resources needed for agricultural production (i.e. land resources, financial resources, subcontracting, and agronomic consulting). Under the new system, land owners entrust the management of their assets to a network-based cooperative association as part of an emphasis on financial performance. The practices of the key actors involved in developing and promoting cooperative farming, but also the established capitalized farmers who rent land near their farms or further afield, have had an impact on their relationship to the land. As a result of these developments, a new form of entrepreneurial agriculture has emerged that illustrates the changing face of territorial embeddedness, as well as the increasingly close relationship between agriculture and urban centers and the increasing detachment from agri-cultural activity per se.