Assessment of land use practices in mountain livestock farms: the case of farms producing milk for Beaufort cheese (Northern Alps)

In order to study the maintenance of an open landscape at farm level, knowledge of the detemining factors in land use practices is required. An agronomic model that relates the constraints in tne use of grasslands with their effective functions enables several hypotheses to be tested on land use by dairy farms in a valley of the Northern Alps. The application of the model reveals that the land use and upkeep practices are often not standard". The farmers' operating logics combined with the characteristics of their field patterns explain these results. / L'étude du maintien d'un paysage ouvert passe, au niveau de l'exploitation, par la connaissance des déterminants de l'utilisation des parcelles. Cet article évalue les pratiques d'utilisation de l'espace dans les exploitations laitières en zone Beaufort (Alpes du Nord).