France
It is not the great but the simple peasants
Who the land recognises as kind children.
The land does not love the blood or waste:
Nothing comes from tyrants and their dirty hands
Else ordure or blood; the beloved ploughmen
Adorn her beautiful bosom with such lovely colours,
Making streams run in the green meadows,
Or with order and compass, the blue gardens
Show to the merry sky their measured squares.
The mowed beds and the straight alleys,
With dextrous hands and the cord, are settled;
They are painters, embroiderers and their great tapestry
Is darkened with grapes and yellowed with corn.
(Agrippa d’Aubigné, Misères, livre I, v 275 – 288)
Ce ne sont pas les grands, mais les simples paysans,
Que la terre connaît pour enfants complaisants.
La terre n’aime pas le sang ni les ordures :
Il ne sort des tyrans et de leurs mains impures
Qu’ordures ni que sang; les aimés laboureurs
Ouvragent son beau sein de si belles couleurs,
Font courir les ruisseaux dedans les vertes prées,
Ou par ordre et compas les jardins azurés
Montrent au ciel riant leurs carreaux mesurés ;
Les parterres tondus et les droites allées
Des droiturières mains au cordeau sont réglées ;
Ils sont peintres, brodeurs, et puis leurs grands tapis
Noircissent de raisins et jaunissent d’épis.
(Agrippa d’Aubigné, Misères, livre I, v 275 – 288)
French agricultural landscapes
1. Cultural dimension
Considered in national planning and policy:
2. Typical agricultural landscape types
- Bocage landscape: hedges and stone walls, small enclosed fields
- Plains
- Transhumance and pastoralist landscapes for animal husbandry
- Canyons and mountain grassland landscapes e.g., Haute-Vienne, Haut-Jura
- Fruit trees in terraces or plains e.g. vineyards, olive trees, fruit trees
3. Cultural elements connected with national agricultural landscape
- Hedges and stone walls
- Buildings related to transhumance
- Hollow ways
- Terraces
- Outstanding individual trees, weathered trees
4. Disciplines and professions dealing with agricultural landscapes as cultural heritage
- Agricultural scientist, agronomist
- Landscape and spatial planner
- Geographer
- Archaeologist
5. National governmental departments dealing with agricultural landscape and cultural heritage
- Ministry of agriculture
- Universities with departments of landscape planning and ecology, e.g.: École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles (ENSP)
- Universities with departments of agriculture, e.g. ENITAC Clermont-Ferrand
- Chambers of agriculture
- The regional directorates of Food, Agriculture and Forestry
- Institutions for agricultural education
- National institute for Agricultural research (INRA)
