The need to preserve peri-urban farmland in the Global North has increased alongside growing concern over the social and environmental costs of urban sprawl, as well as urban demands for food and agriculture-related environmental, recreational, and landscape services. In France, the state has recognized the preservation of peri-urban farmland as a major issue since the 1990s, and has introduced stricter land use regulations through national laws, while some local governments have tested and implemented innovative initiatives. However, there have been very few systematic inquiries into the social impacts of such farmland preservation policies so far. In this paper, our goal is thus to provide an analytical framework to better consider social justice issues raised by the implementation of farmland preservation policies. We use this analytical framework to examine the social impacts of recent French farmland preservation policies: the 2000 SRU national law and two innovative farmland management initiatives tested near the city of Montpellier. The major outcome of this study is a renewed way to look at farmland preservation on the urban fringe through the lens of social justice—highlighting potential spatial, social, generational, or professional inequalities. Around Montpellier, farmland preservation policies tend to exclude new farmers and allow established farmers to capture resources such as land and rights to build farm structures, hindering the renewal and diversification of farms that would be necessary to develop multifunctional agriculture and local food systems.