François Tanguy-Prigent was born to a farming family on 11 October 1909 in the small town of Saint-Jean-du-Doigt, in the Finistère department of Brittany.

In 1933–34 he played a major role in creation of the Fédération paysanne du Finistère, an agricultural union affiliated with the CNP, of which he became a national director.

For many months he helped put in place the structure of Armée secrète (the secret army) for the 19 departments in the northwest of France.

[2] In August that year, he participated in the arrest of peasant populist and former Vichy official Henry Dorgères.

He was named Minister of Agriculture by General Charles de Gaulle, holding office from September 1944 to October 1947.

[2] He dissolved the Vichy regime's Peasant Corporation in September 1944, but the unity of agricultural organizations that it had established persisted.

[4] He replaced the Corporation with a national union of working farmers rather than landowners, the General Confederation of Agriculture (GCA).