The book proposes to study the professional group of agricultural advisers in order to renew the social and political history of the modernization of French agriculture during the "Trente glorieuses".

This book presents the historical trajectory and the social mechanisms that allowed machines to become the central techniques in the emergence of "modern" and "productive" agriculture. At the intersection of the history and sociology of agriculture, technology, labour and the environment, the book identifies the political and fiscal mechanisms.