Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2025

The scrutiny of comitted backers. Exploring crowdfunding in French agriculture.

Résumé

This research explores the motivations and uses of French farmers using crowdfunding platforms, and considers whether and how this alternative financing mechanism promotes the growth and sustainability of farms, particularly those outside the dominant agricultural models. Traditional agricultural financing combines mutualism, public credit (national and European subsidies) and bank loans (Loveluck, 2021). Crowdfunding for agriculture in France began in the early 2010s and has supported over 8,090 projects (7,000 via Miimosa, 1090 via Blue Bees, on dec. 2024). Crowdfunding, like fair trade (Le Velly, 2006), promotes virtuous economic exchanges and reciprocal producer-consumer relationships based on trust. It is emerging as a counterweight to the liberalization and financiarisation of modern agri-capitalism (Purseigle, Nguyen, Blanc, 2017). This practice tends to recruit farmers who advocate more virtuous models of production and who wish to put their practices to the test under the watchful eye of ‘committed’ contributors (Dubuisson-Quellier, 2009). Submitting a project to crowdfunding also means agreeing to follow, more or less faithfully, the guidelines and prescriptions laid down by the platforms and their designers. In this sense, how does crowdfunding frame the financing of French agriculture and, more broadly, what does this case tell us about the power of digital platforms to reconfigure socio-economic sectors? Focusing on France’s leading agricultural crowdfunding platforms (Miimosa and Blue Bees) and donation-based financing projects, we argue that these platforms act as new ‘credit desks’ (Gireaudeau, Graber, 2019), validating entrepreneurial initiatives. We examine which farmers and farming models receive this validation, their use of the platforms, and the role of digital actors in framing the market and agricultural visions (Callon, 2017). This study draws on qualitative data from 63 interviews (2021–2022) with both crowdfunding adopters and non-adopters, ensuring that the latter group’s abstention is not related to digital illiteracy. It leads to two main findings. First, it shows that crowdfunding encourages the emergence and consolidation of farms at the margins of dominant agricultural models. While still a marginal source of finance in agriculture, crowdfunding empowers ‘outsiders’ and promotes alternative farming models that might struggle to secure finance through traditional channels. Yet it works without completely disrupting the more dominant forms of agriculture and finance. In fact, the success of a crowdfunding campaign can often be used as a guarantee to obtain bank loans, demonstrating a certain form of institutionalization of the practice. The use of digital crowdfunding platforms aligns with established financial institutions, and rather than playing the role of disruptive outsiders, these platforms fit into the ongoing process of agricultural diversification that characterizes new agricultural capitalism. In this way, this study highlights the emergence of crowdfunding platforms as alternative ‘gateways’ for validating agricultural projects through public approval, as opposed to the supposedly more rigid criteria of banks or public institutions. Second, this study highlights the work of ‘exhortations to give’ (Steiner, 2016) inherent in crowdfunding as a significant effort in crafting compelling narratives and managing relationships with contributors. This effort highlights the uneven capacity of farmers, in terms of communication or marketing skills, to leverage this tool beyond their personal networks. In addition, the process of crowdfunding, including the development of project narratives and ongoing engagement with contributors, has a performative effect on farmers’ practices. By publicly committing to certain values and principles, farmers are incentivized to align their operations with the expectations of their backers. In this way, farming practices appear to have been shaped as much as worked by crowdfunding, in which sense these practices and uses of crowdfunding platforms provide a privileged vantage point from which to examine the socio-economic transformations at work in the platformisation of an economic sector.

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Dates et versions

hal-05158826 , version 1 (11-07-2025)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-05158826 , version 1

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Victor Potier, Cédric Calvignac. The scrutiny of comitted backers. Exploring crowdfunding in French agriculture.. Annual Congress of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, SASE, Jul 2025, Montreal (Canada), Canada. ⟨hal-05158826⟩
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