How do farmers’ pluriactivity projects evolve?

Abstract

Long criticized, pluriactivity is now perceived as an alternative agricultural strategy and it is becoming a subject of support policies. However, having an off-farm job generates organizational issues that can penalize the viability of this strategy. In this paper, we study the initial motivations of pluriactivity and the strategies developed by farmers over time to handle pluriactivity difficulties and we examine conditions that lead to permanent pluriactivity or not. We use an original qualitative approach interviewing 29 pluriactive farmers in “Nord-Pas de Calais”, region located in northern France. Our results show that pluriactivity is a dynamic strategy and farmers develop different strategies to adapt their pluriactivity over time to their farm requirements and time constraints. We find that most of the trajectories lead to a permanent pluriactive status, but pluriactivity lasts longer when both activities adapt to each other.