Rural protests are a well-established subject in rural geography, studied e.g. through the various forms of farmers' mobilization (“action-oriented”, “progressive farmers” or “established unions”). Since 2024, farmers' protests have reached an unparalleled scale in the EU, leading to rapid environmental political setbacks. Within this context, France appears to be specific insofar as agricultural governance is determined by the results of professional elections held at the provincial level, to which three main farmers’ unions run. The 2025 elections marked the end of the long-standing dominance of the FNSEA union, with several Chambers of Agriculture now being led by a protesters’ union (the “Rural Coordination”). This presentation questions the territorial factors explaining the evolution of each farmers’ union’s electoral results across the 5 last elections (2001, 2007, 2013, 2019 and 2025). Our methodology builds on a novel dataset featuring the results of 467 provincial ballots, that we compiled, cleaned and formatted. We carried out statistical and cartographic analyses of these data. Our results show the spatial extension of the conservative 'action-oriented farmers' tendency, in the face of the decline and stabilization (in isolated provinces) of the 'progressive farmers' tendency, and the decrease of 'established unions', still resisting in the most productive field crops regions. We cross these results with farmers' unions direct actions during the campaign for the 2025 professional elections, showing in which provinces the tensions between unions summit. Lastly, we analyze the spatial relationship between the overrepresentation of each farmers’ unions and the pathways of agricultural transitions.

Rural protests are a well-established subject in rural geography, studied e.g. through the various forms of farmers' mobilization (“action-oriented”, “progressive farmers” or “established unions”). Since 2024, farmers' protests have reached an unparalleled scale in the EU, leading to rapid environmental political setbacks. Within this context, France appears to be specific insofar as agricultural governance is determined by the results of professional elections held at the provincial level, to which three main farmers’ unions run. The 2025 elections marked the end of the long-standing dominance of the FNSEA union, with several Chambers of Agriculture now being led by a protesters’ union (the “Rural Coordination”). This presentation questions the territorial factors explaining the evolution of each farmers’ union’s electoral results across the 5 last elections (2001, 2007, 2013, 2019 and 2025). Our methodology builds on a novel dataset featuring the results of 467 provincial ballots, that we compiled, cleaned and formatted. We carried out statistical and cartographic analyses of these data. Our results show the spatial extension of the conservative 'action-oriented farmers' tendency, in the face of the decline and stabilization (in isolated provinces) of the 'progressive farmers' tendency, and the decrease of 'established unions', still resisting in the most productive field crops regions. We cross these results with farmers' unions direct actions during the campaign for the 2025 professional elections, showing in which provinces the tensions between unions summit. Lastly, we analyze the spatial relationship between the overrepresentation of each farmers’ unions and the pathways of agricultural transitions.