Assessment of land use practices in mountain livestock farms. The case of farms producing milk for Beaufort cheese (Northern Alps).
Résumé
To study the maintenance of an open landscape at farm level requires knowledge of the determining factors for the land use practices. An agronomic model placing the constraints in the use of grasslands in relation with their effective functions enables several hypotheses to be tested on land use by dairy farms in a valley in the Northern Alps. The application of the model reveals that land use and upkeep practices are often ‘not standard’. The farmers’ functioning logics combined with the characteristics of their field pattern explain these results.