Comment concilier les contraintes économiques et environnementales dans des systèmes basés sur les prairies ? (Session n°6)

How can the economic and the environmental constraints be conciliated in pasture-based systems ? (Session n°6)

This is a synthetical and critical presentation of the papers of the session n°6 of the European Grassland Congress (La Rochelle, 27-30 May 2002).
The three plenary papers deal with the multi-functionality of grasslands, from very different points of view. The first one gives an account of the evolution of grasslands and the associated environmental challenges in the various O.E.C.D. countries, and draws some prospects about them. The second paper deals, from a micro-economic point of view, with the question why farmers become disinterested in grasslands, while society at large sees them as meeting their requirements, and with the question of how the development of grasslands can be favoured by the market forces or by public subsidies. The third paper is ethnological and shows how the development of incitations involving the environment changes the references and the identities of the farmers themselves.
A synthesis of the 55 papers devoted to the subject follows, with some tentative ideas about the future. By nature the subject had to be treated both economically and ecologically ; actually, the papers proved rather heterogeneous. The various papers had very different approaches (agronomical, economical, sociological, ethnological, ecological...), and were based on studies differing by their scales (plot, farm, territory) and their methods (trials, observations of fields or of farms, surveys, simulations). Apart from the three plenary papers, not much was attempted regarding functional analyses, i.e. what was actually expected. A large field remains therefore open for future investigations.