Agriculture et environnement : réflexions sociologiques

The environmental issue is becoming a major component of the social debate. However, the means of its integration and its exact position within that debate remain to be fully appreciated. By identifying its principal features, we should, nevertheless, be able to develop a set of central hypotheses. Using this framework, and by taking certain key questions into account, particularly those relevant to agriculture, we can describe in detail the situation in which French farmers may be involved, in a sociological sense, as environmental constraints develop. Our problem is to identify the right questions, rather than to begin to provide immediate answers.