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.

[2] 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 corporatist structure in agriculture.

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.

[8][9] The commission, headed by Count Hervé Budes de Guébriant, was mostly made up of leading conservative landowners and took nearly two years to develop the legislation that became effective on 16 December 1942.

[10] De Guébriant and his main associate Rémy Goussault identified "corporatist" local agrarian organizations, which would become the departmental branches of the corporation.

They favored traditional notables as regional Corporation heads (syndics) for each department, but included four followers of Henry Dorgères who had strong local support.

[13] In 1941–44 Adolphe Pointier, a large-scale wheat and sugar beet farmer in the Somme department, was syndic national or chief executive of the corporation.

[12] The corporation struggled to become effective, handicapped by a temporary structure, internal conflicts, and actions by the Ministry of Agriculture that reduced its authority and introduced reforms without consultation.

Vichy received valid criticism for preserving the privileges of the large landowners and aristocrats at the expense of the peasants, who were supposed to be among the nation's "vital forces".

[23] The new socialist Minister of Agriculture, François Tanguy-Prigent, replaced it with a national union of working farmers rather than landowners, the Confédération générale de l'agriculture (GCA).

In March 1946 the farming union, the Fédération nationale des syndicats d'exploitants agricoles (FNSEA), formed[24] which gradually supplanted the CGA.