More sheep, more space...but not any tractor ! Is farm enlargement (always) damageable regarding sustainability in French Mediterranean mountains ?

In the Mediterranean mountains, in order to face the CAP, sheep farmers had to consider the following possibilities: growing, or producing certified lamb with more productive constraints but higher income , or diversifying farms activities. In this area, sheep farming is characterized by an important use of rangeland, sometimes collective ones, since the system is based on a great mobility, especially during summer time. Sheep, and sometimes farmers, move to higher rangeland where they stay for 4 months and where they find food to eat. They then come back at the end of summer and spend winter in / around villages. In this paper we’d like to pay attention to farmers who decided to grow, in order to increase their income, with sometimes 2000 sheep (vs. 500 for others). To be able to feed their sheep, they have to increase their mobility, since not enough food is available in local and surrounding rangelands. That’s the reason these farmers and their sheep leave the alpine mountains during winter to reach Mediterranean plains to get available grass. Our paper wonders about the contribution of these big farms to local development and sustainability. Our research is grounded on empirical data collected during a sociological survey (2012) in one of the most famous alpine area dedicated to sheep farming. In this paper, we describe how these farmers manage and take advantage from natural resources, focusing on the social dimensions of their reshaped activity. We insist on new and strong networks they need to develop, we describe the way that labour and familial organization is affected, and wonder about their professional legitimacy within the different sphere they belong. At least, we focus on their great flexibility, one of the main key of these productive systems. To conclude, we insist on the necessity to shift to larger scales, both at territorial and professional levels, in order to better analyse how, complement arily to others, these big farms contribute to rural development. We hypothesize that, in this very case, big sized farms can contribute in conciliating economy and ecology