Food supply chains, long working day, paradoxes, tensions and professional satisfaction in organic market garden farms

International audience

English. Organic farming combined with short food supply chains appears as a promising alternative to liberalism and industrial agriculture. As now strongly granted, it contributes to redesign relations between production and consumption, between cities and rural spaces. It is also based on more friendly and respectful relations with environment and biodiversity and allows food quality and diversity. Vegetable producers are probably one of the most emblematic professional group that can easily get involved in short food supply chains (such as the French AMAP, or the Italian GAS, or the US CSA). We consider that a “healthy work”, to refer to Karasek and Theorell’s approach, and a good quality of working life is one of the key, and / but underexplored, dimensions of the sustainability of these alternative systems, beside environmental and economic justice. This paper is therefore dedicated to analyze “organic work” at the production and marketing level, in the case of species diversified producers involved in short-chains supply. It is based on an empirical fieldwork in the south of France, in an area specialized in vegetable production. The reflection is grounded on the following paradox: in these systems, work is described as much more important but also much more satisfying Exploring this paradox, we’ll pay attention to the way organic + SFSC can redesign farmer’s job and work, respecting to social sustainability and its contribution to a sustainable rural development. We‘ll consider seriously the very notion of “work satisfaction” and we’ll show the importance of a good balance between the 3 dimensions identified by Karasek and Theorell: the “latitude decision”, the “psychological demands” and “the “social support”. This latter is probably one of the key criteria in the systems we observed. It is deeply needed for farmers, whether it comes from consumers, from society, or from professional arena, especially as the work level is high and the workings days are often long and back breaking.