Peasant Corporation

Peasant Corporation

Corporation paysanne
Postage stamp of 24 April 1944 celebrating launch of the corporation
Formation	1941–43
Extinction	1944
Type	Agrarian union
Legal status	Defunct
Purpose	Organize mutual support of agricultural workers, farmers, artisans and landowners
Headquarters	Paris, France
Official language	French

The Peasant Corporation (French: Corporation paysanne) was a Paris-based organization created by the Vichy France government during World War II (1939–45) to support a corporatist structure of agricultural syndicates. The Ministry of Agriculture was unenthusiastic and undermined the Corporation, which was launched with a provisional structure in 1941 that was not finalized until 1943. By then the small farmers and farm workers had become disillusioned since the Corporation had maintained the privileged position of landowners and had not protected them from demands by the increasingly unpopular German occupiers. The Corporation, which was never effective, was dissolved after the liberation of France in September 1944.

The Peasant Corporation had its roots in the rural Syndicats Agricoles, whose Union Centrale des Syndicats Agricoles (UCSA) became the Union Nationale des Syndicats Agricoles (UNSA) in 1934 when Jacques Le Roy Ladurie became its secretary general.Louis Salleron played a leading role in defining the structure of the Corporation. As the semi-official theoretician of the UNSA he was the main author of the draft law of September 1940 on the Corporation Paysanne, which would create a corporative structure in agriculture.

The broad concept was that each community would have a "corporative syndicate" of all peasant families, grouped into regional "corporative unions" which would assign delegates to meet periodically in a National Corporative Council. In parallel, and subordinate to the Corporation, there would be various unified professional groups including cooperatives, mutual insurance and credit funds, and specialized groups for each of the main agricultural products. The Corporation would be "a decentralized organization possessing disciplinary powers." Political and social divisions would be eliminated by creating a single syndicate in each commune that would include landowners, tenant farmers, sharecroppers, farmworkers and artisans.

After many revisions and some objections from the Germans the Peasant Charter was promulgated on 2 December 1940.Pierre Caziot was Minister of Agriculture and Supplies from 12 July 1940 to 6 September 1940, then Secretary of State for Agriculture and Supplies from 6 September 1940 to 13 December 1940 in the government of Marshal Philippe Pétain. He was Minister and Secretary of State for Agriculture from 13 December 1940 to 18 April 1942 in the governments of Pétain and François Darlan. Caziot promulgated the law of 2 December 1940 that organized the Peasant Corporation. Although he was in favor of a national peasant organization, Caziot accepted the word "corporation" only at Pétain's insistence.