Which types of farms for managing mountain grasslands in the future? A prospective approach

Looking to the future in mountain areas and changing in agricultural markets and policies, local managers need specific tools and datasets in order to project into how macroeconomic changes will affect their local livestock conditions. In response to this challenge, we worked on an approach for successfully modelling a local-level outlook with particular focus on the various different types of mountain farms. The objective is to succeed in harnessing local expert knowledge with technic-economic modelling output in order to test scenarios integrating both general and local changes. Preliminary testing of this approach focused on a grassland region in the French Massif Central. Results indicate that in such mountain area the local impacts of CAP reform and price changes are more significant for the livestock economy than for land-use patterns and landscape management.