ABSTRACT
Over the last decade and a half, Europe has witnessed a widespread process of repeasantization. This process mainly expresses itself qualitatively. It involves enlarging autonomy and widening a resource base much narrowed by previous processes of specialization that followed the script of entrepreneurship. Repeasantization is also about fine-tuning that allows for new, often highly pleasing, gains in productivity. In short, it is about making agriculture again more peasant like. The degree of peasantness (Toledo, 1995) is increasing, resulting in the creation of new relations that concern both society and nature and which allow for a new ‘embedding’ of farming. Although repeasantization stems from many different sources, it is triggered by, and develops as a response to, the squeeze imposed on farming, and the marginalization, deprivation, degradation and growing dependency that go with it.
