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Abstract
In light of the powerful increase in environmental regulations in the past 20 years, the solidarities among professional farmers are undergoing important reforms. In the Netherlands, these restructurings have given rise to new locally-based organizations – the “environmental cooperatives”. These transformations can be explained both by the dynamic of ecologising the practices that encourage agricultural organizations to review their initial projects, and by the State’s public management reforms that stimulate the construction of new underlying principles among professional associations. These new forms of associative unity, induced by the nature protection policies, mark a historical shift in the management of the agricultural sector. They attest to a certain decrease in professional autonomy, and to the institution of a professionnalism constructed “from above” at the heart of which the farmers have less control over their working conditions.