Inheritance and Production Systems: The Case of La Soule [Pyrenees Atlantiques, France]

A 1980-1982 study of La Soule, a Basque area in the French Pyrenees, shows that production & succession strategies with regard to family farms are closely related. Farmers were surveyed, agricultural statistics were reviewed, & interviews were conducted with the Ru notaries who handle the legal transactions involved (N not given). The size of farms, their degree of modernization & specialization, & the contents & forms of production are largely explained by the ways in which property is transferred from one generation to the next. The generally admitted principle that the property should be divided unequally among the coheirs is the keystone of this ancestral system of production & reproduction. Modified HA