Rural Europe on the move English_E_version_all | Page 99

Prosperity through
migration
Many years ago, when I had
proposed a visit to the Beaufortain
region to my Forum Synergies friends,
I had just discovered the convincing
history of sustainable development
behind this cheese, which is also a
European history dating back to the
17th century. Beaufort cheese was
in Beaufortain became a source of
sustainable prosperity and autonomy
for the remote region for nearly four
centuries now.
Sustainable
development
is not a quiet river
It took a lot of personal struggle,
born from an exchange between the creativity, dialogue and tenacity for farmers of this small Alpine massif the people of Beaufortain to meet the and Swiss cheese-makers. According challenges that have marked these to historians, the cradle of these great four centuries. The most recent, the cheeses is a mountainous region of modernisation and restructuring of who believed that it was possible to
central Switzerland, at the gateway agriculture from the 1970s onwards, maintain a small family farm under
to the Alpine passes opening to is not the least. “How can we react two conditions: increasing the added
Italy. From this region, the technique to the widespread concentration value of their cow’s milk by favouring
of making this ‘long-life cheese’ and intensification of agriculture that quality cheeses; and ‘sticking together’
has spread to the current region threatens to confine this mountain by processing and marketing the
of Fribourg and the municipality of area to exclusively tourism and energy cheese through their cooperative.
Gruyères. functions? What if it accelerates the
Faced with the economic difficulties
First were some visionary farmers
rural exodus and destroys beautiful
of the Fribourg region of that time, agricultural landscapes?” These were
cheese-makers emigrated to the questions raised that led the
neighbouring Franche-Comté and residents of the Beaufortain region to
Savoie where rich landowners hired think and act collectively forty years
them to develop their mountains. This ago, when they launched the Beaufort
development of a new type of cheese cheese cooperative.
OPPOSITE
1. View of Arêches-Beaufort,
a Beaufortain village
THIS PAGE
2. The Beaufort cooperative, where
cheese is produced and stored
3. Farming in mountains areas
4. Beaufort cheese wheels
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