Intégration marchande et évolution des systèmes agraires montagnards. Le cas des Dômes (Massif central)

Abstract

Integration and Evolution of Trading Methods in Mountains : the Dômes (Massif central) as an Example. During the last two centuries, the agricultural and food market has established itself on a national scale, and areas with differenciated types of production are now in competition. The ancient agricultural systems, whose role was chiefly to meet local needs (although exchanges between different regions certainly existed), have gradually disintegrated and been replaced by regional specializations which indeed are part of a national or even international pattern of agricultural/food supply. Mountain agriculture, being like a poor relation in this spatial division of labour, is rapidly regressing. The agricultural history of the Dômes illustrates in a distinctive way this process of trading integration of mountainous areas. Its originality lies in the development of a farm cheese production (saint-nectaire), which provides an important profit and allows numerous farmers to stay on their farms. But the saint-nectaire production has been increasing for fifteen years, which alters the profits on the milk market and brings forth a selective process of intensification of milk production. The loss of the "rente de situation" which occurs as a consequence may then accelerate the disappearance of the least competitive farms as they will then be integrated into the national milk market.