Populations animales et systèmes agraires. L'exemple des bovins laitiers

This paper attempts to explore the crisis between society and territory as materialized in the area of livestock farming, and to propose new research paths. This crisis is expressed simultaneously by surplus production and depressed quality of output on one hand and by society’s new perception of damage caused to the environment by livestock farming practices on the other hand. The case of dairy farming is exemplary for this purpose, since this industry has constantly been at the vanguard of modernity in livestock farming. The notion of agrarian system seemed to provide an appropriate means of approaching this complexity. That of animal population considered in its biological as well as cultural dimensions has been used as an indicator of the agrarian system. The first part surveys the changes that have occurred in France over the last two centuries in dairy cattle populations and in the agrarian systems to which they were linked. Three entities are successively analysed and used to define the notion of animal population : local populations, breeds, specific lines derived from collective selection schemes. The second part highlights the main features of these changes : extension of breed ranges and structuring of livestock organisations along with breed specialisation, regionally, supplanting of the older breeds by the more evolved breeds at a pace that depended on the evolution possibilities of agrarian systems, dissemination of new population types from focal points that developed on the margins of the range of older one’s. However, simultaneously with this long term process, the older breeds were seen to resist locally. Interestingly, this resistence is being stimulated by the crisis. To address this contradiction in the current evolution of dairy cattle farming, we need to broaden our reflection and include the concept of «metadevelopment » put forward by Morin. On the basis of a few examples, the bio-ecological, psychological and socio-cultural aspects of this evolution and their interactions are discussed. We suggest that these aspects be integrated in an Action-Research procedure that would associate people involved in the production sectors with people charged with the management of rural territories in which animal populations could be the indicators of a local technical culture. These new research perspectives should help refine the field of application of locally based multidisciplinary studies resting on the two postulates of comprehensiveness