ABSTRACT
The international institutions that were behind the external factors were not, though, an innovation of the post-war period. The organisations that were established during or after the Second World War responded to models, projects and ideas that had been developed in the interwar period, especially in the 1930s under the pressure of the Great Depression. From the late 19th century onwards and especially in the interwar period, a new generation of international institutions was born. They configured a strong reference for the national discourses and offered new instruments to the working together of agricultural intellectuals and politicians. The understanding of European agriculture as an exceptional sector which, on one hand, had a special value for economic and extra-economic reasons and, on the other hand, could not survive if it was not subject to the specific regulations, became a shared view of these official and unofficial networks.
