Do we need to remobilze traditional knowledge and practices in order to manage meadows in Atlantic Pyrenees (France)?

Abstract

Over the last years, emphasis has been put on permanent meadows multifunctionality. It is now recognized that it provides ecosystem services and is helpful for feed self-sufficiency in farming systems. However, in Pyrenees young farmers expressed their distraught toward the management of the local floristic diversity characterizing natural meadows while their predecessors were used to it and had great knowledge on its dynamics before farm modernization in the sixties. Therefore, this study aimed to collect traditional knowledge relative to this topic before it was lost forever. This work, conduced within a action research group, focused on practices that are now barely observable in Pyrenean farming system. Qualitative data has been collected through semi-directed interviews of retired farmers and agricultural counsellors or teachers. It then has been analyzed with NVivo, a qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS). Traditional knowledge was empirical and transmitted within farmers’ families for generations. It implemented the management of perennial meadows on its diverse floristic composition preservation. This last one relied on late mowing, low nitrogen animal manure fertilization and on the use of farm-saved grass seeds gathered in hay dust, in the barn, at the end of the winter. Most of these traditional practices, seen as useless in nowadays economic context, provide us solution to think about for farm self-sufficiency.