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600 and 750 m of altitude on the slopes of the valley of the Alagnon, between Massiac and Murat. In Haute Loire, the town of Puy-en-Velay also had an important vineyard whose traces are still clearly visible on the slopes of Vals-près-le-Puy. The very intensive development of these slopes coveted by the city’s shopkeepers sharply contrasts with other far more extensive agricultural activities.

The northernmost terraces of France are lost in the immensity of the Alsatian vineyards between 200 and 400 m above sea level. These unusual terraces concentrated on a few slopes exposed to the south form rare islets, from Thann to Ribeauvillé, passing by Ammerschwihr, Kaysersberg and Guebwiller. It is undoubtedly the pedological constraints and a greater sensitivity to erosion that explain the construction of the walls on these plots of lands. But this constraint, combined with a remarkable exhibition, has become an asset, thus creating exceptional terroirs, as on the slope of “Kitterlé” in Guebwiller, which is renowned for a few hectares, facing the extent of the Alsatian vineyard without terraces. Here, the poor and sandy soil can never yield large quantities of grapes. But exposure to the sun from the east to the west fosters the concentration of aromas in the grapes and gives wines an exceptional longevity. “For the capacious force, the finesse of the bouquet, no other Alsace vintage surpasses the Kitterlé”, (anonymous chronicler nineteenth century). This is why these plots managed by small peasants are now in the hands of the flags of the industrialists and vine growers of this region.

In the Alps, islet terraces are rare in the northern Alps. One can, however, mention the tiny vineyard of Cevins in Tarentaise, installed by the monks in the very early Middle Ages, abandoned after the invasion of the phylloxera and recently rehabilitated. But it is less than 10 ha. In the valley of “Moyen Grésivaudan”, a few tiny vineyards were set up on the steep slopes facing south, at the foot of the “Balcons de Belledonne”, between Grenoble and Montmélian. Further south in the Massif des Ecrins, remarkable terraces are always visible around La Grave, in the upper valley of the Romanche. They range from 1300 to 2400 m above the hamlets of the “Clots” or “Hières”. The technique of grading is fostered here in view of the large quantities of earth available. Built in the eighteenth century, their only purpose was the production of cereals and potatoes. Continuing further east in the Massif du Queyras, some terracing systems exist, but still more limited like in Arvieux at 1600 m above sea level around the only hamlet of “Maison”. Consisting of drystone walls or slopes, the fields are also framed at the right of the slope by “clapiers”. Called elsewhere “murgers” or “clapas”, they recovered the materials resulting from the stone. Food crops and hay meadows succeeded before the agricultural depression condemned these slopes where the terraces occupied only a few hectares.

5.6What is the Reality of Terraced Agriculture in France in 2017?

Landscapes of poor peasants living on tiny, fragmented and marginalized farms, these islands of terraces were the first to be affected by agricultural decline and rural exodus. But everywhere in France the agricultural function of the terraces gradually

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declined from the middle of the nineteenth century, showing the rural exodus and the successive crisis that particularly affected this sloping agriculture: the Phylloxera which fell on the vine in 1863, the Ink which attacked the chestnut trees in 1860 and 1865, the Pebrine which ravaged the silkworm farms and the complacent worms to which they were associated. Other constraints will also contribute to emptying the mountains of their peasants, especially the effects of mechanization inappropriate to sloping spaces and land fragmentation. Finally, the political choices of the post-war period decided on the “end of the peasants” (Mendras 1967) and the disappearance of this mode of production characterized by a subsistence economy accompanied by a great autonomy in the organization of the process of production and of labour. According to Mendras, the French peasantry is then gradually replaced by agricultural professionals who organize their production according to a capitalist mode. The peasants of the terraces were the first victims. Since the 1950s, the main agricultural actors have opted for the abandonment of the mountains, fostering monoculture farming in the plain on large farms. Only a few terraced spaces have escaped this general decline, saved by productions with high added value, mainly winegrowing. But this survival has served as a model for those who, beginning in the 1980s, were wondering about a possible reconquest of certain terroirs of terraces in a perspective of sustainable development (Fig. 5.4).

Little by little, many reclamation projects were born in France. This reconquest was certainly carried out on very limited areas, but with promising results that demonstrate that terraced farming is not obsolescent. The pioneers of this revival are mainly winegrowers who set out again to attack the hillsides of the Northern

Fig. 5.4 Production of sweet onions. Cévennes. Photo J. du Boisberranger

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Rhone Valley from the late sixties and on a smaller space in the Eastern Pyrenees. In the 1970s, other attempts were made. In Ardèche, for example, in the lower valley of the Eyrieux around new crops such as the feijoa, a fruit tree that could take the place of peach trees, or the crosne of japan, a small tubercle much appreciated by the gourmets. Other farmers set up medicinal and aromatic plants on their terraces, but always on isolated farms. Starting in the 1990s, vegetable crops also found terroirs with strong identity on terraces, as in the Cévennes with the cultivation of sweet onion. This production, which is now recognized by an AOC obtained in 2003 and a PDO awarded in 2008, concerns about thirty farms, forty hectares and a hundred members grouped together in a cooperative located in Saint-André de Majencoules in the Gard. In Ardèche, on smaller areas, the early potato “échamp de l’Eyrieux” tries to relaunch agriculture in terraces. At the level of France, we do not have an exhaustive census of all these projects, but their number probably exceeds a hundred. Through the renewal of the vineyard of Cevins in Savoie, the reconquest of the terraces in Boudes in the Puy de Dôme, the revival of the “Chatus” grape variety in Ardèche or the revaluation of the AOC “Côtes-de-Millau” measure the dynamics triggered.

Will the evolution of consumption patterns, the questioning of chemical agriculture and monoculture, offer terraces and those who cultivate them new prospects for the twenty-first century?1

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