Forming One (Corporate) Body with the Farmers

This article questions the importance of agricultural press for the majoritarian farmers’union, the FNSEA, dealing with the question of its representativeness. At first, the authors highlight a phased trend towards press concentration to the benefit of majority union. During challenging times, the core issue remains the FNSEA ability to reassert its position and especially to symbolically build the unity of the peasantry, a highly heterogeneous social group. Réussir is established in 1986. It groups together departmental newspapers under the union monitoring. The most powerful or agricultural organizations takes equity investments in two flagships of this agricultural press (Agra press agency, France agricole) in 2011. Thus, FNSEA could champion the cause of the agricultural world. Shareholding is an attribute of union forces. Secondly, the authors question the control modalities by the union of the editorial line and the journalists working in different newspapers linked to the FNSEA. They describe the variety of union dependency connections, linked to the individual trajectories of journalists. Thus, the article shows that FNSEA is far from exercising on those medias a monolithic domination.