The General Confederation of Agriculture (CGA) was a short lived national association of

syndicats agricoles A syndicat agricole is a French speaking farmers' union. In France The syndicats first formed after the Waldeck Rousseau law of 1884 legalised French unions. At the same time Catholic social teaching was evolving and encouraging the self help ...

to replace the

Vichy regime Vichy France (; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was a French rump state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II, established as a result of the French capitulation after the defeat against ...

's Corporation Paysanne after the

Liberation of France The liberation of France () in the Second World War was accomplished through diplomacy, politics and the combined military efforts of the Allied Powers, Free French forces in London and Africa, as well as the French Resistance. Nazi Germany in ...

History

The CGA originated from the Confédération nationale paysanne (CNP), a socialist-leaning underground union comprising mainly

SFIO The C programming language provides many standard library functions for file input and output. These functions make up the bulk of the C standard library header . The functionality descends from a "portable I/O package" written by Mike Lesk at ...

(socialist) and radical activists. In 1944, the CNP began publishing a newspaper, ''La Résistance Paysanne''. Key socialist figure

François Tanguy-Prigent François Marie Tanguy Prigent (; 11 October 1909 – 20 January 1970) was a French Socialist politician who became a resistance fighter during World War II (1939–45). He was Minister of Agriculture from September 1944 to October 1947 and was ...

became

minister of agriculture An agriculture ministry (also called an agriculture department, agriculture board, agriculture council, or agriculture agency, or ministry of rural development) is a ministry charged with agriculture. The ministry is often headed by a minister f ...

in the

Provisional Government of the French Republic The Provisional Government of the French Republic (PGFR; , GPRF) was the provisional government of Free France between 3 June 1944 and 27 October 1946, following the liberation of continental France after Operations ''Overlord'' and ''Drago ...

on 4 September 1944. The CGA was officially established in March 1945 to unite agricultural sectors, including unions, mutual aid organizations, and cooperatives. Initially, the CGA prospered due to resources obtained from the dissolution of the Corporation Paysanne. In March 1946, the

Fédération nationale des syndicats d'exploitants agricoles The Fédération nationale des syndicats d'exploitants agricoles (FNSEA; ) is a French umbrella organisation charged with the national representation of 20,000 local syndicat agricoles (agricultural unions)) and 22 regional federations. Establis ...

(National Federation of Farmers' Unions or FNSEA) was created as a CGA branch, but it soon dominated the confederation. Political tensions between the PCF and SFIO weakened the CGA, which became dormant in 1953. Henri Canonge, the CGA's sole director, humorously described the organization's mission as: "Article 1: Dissolve the Corporation Paysanne. Article 2: Reinstate it."

Function

The CGA aimed to unify agricultural organizations, akin to how the CGT unified labor unions. It advocated for agricultural modernization and farmer protection within a directed economy framework. The CGA comprised: * A ''syndicalist group'' with: ** Federations for farmers (future FNSEA), agricultural workers, technicians, and rural artisans ** Youth organizations (later the

Centre national des jeunes agriculteurs Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricity ...

) * A ''cooperative group'' with: ** Federations for cooperation, mutual aid, and agricultural credit The organization struggled with internal conflicts between socialist and communist factions. The FNSEA, often led by former members of the Corporation Paysanne, eventually overshadowed the CGA.

Decline

The CGA's six-year struggle ended with the FNSEA absorbing its representative union functions, while cooperative and mutual aid federations returned to their independent operations. Though short-lived, the CGA influenced agricultural policy and union structures in post-war France. Its decline marked the rise of the FNSEA as France's dominant farmers' union.

References

Sources

* * {{Refend Agricultural organizations based in France Organizations established in 1945 Organizations disestablished in 1953