France - The Charolais-Brionnais, cultural landscape of cattle farming

As early as the 17th century, the Charolais-Brionnais, which until then had practiced agricultural pluriactivity, turned towards cattle breeding. The development of this activity, from a local breed initially versatile, selected and improved on its beefing abilities to become a breed of specialized meat (the Charolais breed), was accompanied by a bedding grass. This movement of land conversion arable strengthened in the nineteenth century in a favorable economic and social context (access to property, progress of agronomy, etc.), marked by a strong growth in meat consumption and better accessibility to urban markets through improved transportation. It ended in the second half of the 20th century, generating a landscape dominated by grass, where cultures are almost absent. Although the evolution that leads to the constitution of the proposed cultural landscape can be considered relatively short - a period of about three centuries - it is remarkably documented from the historical point of view. Archival sources can accompany a precise reading of the landscape in several places of the Good.