Résumé
H. Mendras taught us that the category "peasant farmer" was meant to disappear when peasant societies would disappear. This tendency was well illustrated in the European case. However, new evolutions in the social movements up-dating peasant identities in Europe, Latin America and Africa have brought this question to the present debate. This paper intends to present a comparative view of the new family agriculture in the Northeast of Brazil and France, considering the resistance, roots and peasant values. The Brazilian Northeast family farming is characterised by the permanence of an irregular and partial relation to diversified markets, as well as by the modernisation or the resurgence of peasant redistribution relations and reciprocity practices. In France, the claim of peasant trade unions is more linked to the valorisation of product quality and of local identity, although the peasant society does not exist any more. Thus, the integration to segmented markets more and more qualified or still subsidised, questions the future extension and generalisation of the European peasant model. On the contrary, in the Brazilian Northeast, peasant communities which are capable of developing regional and local collective projects still maintain themselves. Parallel to the economic integration of competitive family farming into the markets, there is an alternative for territorial and social integration through pluriactivity and multifunctionality of the agriculture. The challenge is to mobilise and negotiate public policies devoted to modern peasant agriculture, considering the collective attributes and human values, instead of social assistance to poor rural families. (Résumé d'auteur)