Extensive Pastoral Farming: The Ultimate Solution to Reclaim Land from Wildfires

Nicolas Mirouze is a winemaker in Corbières, Aude, and a member of the L’Atelier Paysan cooperative. He advocates for peasant and organic agriculture. His farm is located near the area where wildfires ravaged the department this summer.

Decatur Metro — How did you react to the massive fire that occurred from August 5 to August 9? ?

Nicolas Mirouze — We’re not talking about just one large fire, but a series of them. We experienced five in Corbières this summer. The first began in our town on June 29, right in front of our farm. The wind pushed it across the county road; we didn’t suffer immediate damage. But five days later, it started again.

In the mountains, 400 hectares were lost. On July 10, another fire struck near Narbonne: 2,500 hectares were devastated just 3 kilometers from our home. We hoped that was the end of it, thinking it was the biggest fire… But it was only the beginning. Early August was apocalyptic; we had never seen anything like it. We were living among flames and water-bombing planes, in a state of terrible stress.

In total, 20,000 hectares burned near us in two months. Here’s the reality: we are devastated. Everything is burning, and we see no other prospects. We live as if on borrowed time, thinking it’s only a matter of time before what hasn’t burned yet will catch fire.

Clearly, the vegetation is no longer adapted to the climate. Trees are dying. We have been experiencing an incredible drought for four years: our rainfall totals are less than half of what we used to receive. We are entering a new world. We are no longer just in the dry Mediterranean climate; we have moved into something else, a dry chaos.



How has this phenomenon impacted your farming life? ?

We await rain and dread the summer. The destruction by fire is radically frightening. After a fire passes, nothing remains; it’s total devastation. We need to rebuild and rethink many things to make living here desirable again. As farmers, we are rooted in the soil, we cannot and do not want to flee. Our life is here. We have a physical, almost visceral attachment to this land, even though it is harsh.

Importantly, I believe the fire rekindles a deeper crisis that we have been experiencing for decades. It extends the consequences of agricultural industrialization, capitalizes on agricultural decline, and the disappearance of peasantry.

Between 900 and 2,000 hectares of vineyards burned this summer. But the destruction of vineyards did not start with the fires. Vine uprooting has been driven by productivist policies, favoring large structures and restructuring the sector. In one generation of workers, or less than forty years, half of the vine surface area in the department has been removed. Wastelands have encroached on the most deprived and least irrigated areas, which are also the most at risk in terms of fires.



Are you suggesting that the fires are also an opportunity to assess industrial agriculture?

Absolutely, we must question these uprooting policies that have bolstered the model of intensive agriculture. They have decimated peasant communities, in areas where we could have produced good wine and other types of products. The fire adds to this situation and further weakens peasant agriculture.

Today, it is urgent to imagine another scenario, to replant vineyards, to set up livestock farms, and to revive winter transhumance – those that go from the mountains to the coast – to repopulate this territory.

This disaster must at least allow us to make strategic decisions commensurate with the danger: peasant agriculture must reclaim its place in the abandoned wastelands and lands surrendered to fire. That’s why we advocate for the structuring of an extensive livestock sector in our department.

How could the return of small-scale farming and extensive livestock farming help limit fires? ?

The plan for extensive pastoral installation is the only credible barrier to reclaiming the land from large fires. Through livestock farming, we will have a surface occupation unlike anything we could achieve with vine monoculture. It’s also a good response for protecting natural areas. It allows for diversifying agricultural production by transforming viticultural wastelands into forage areas. Livestock regenerate soils exhausted by the intensive monoculture of vines and clear the wastelands. They serve as excellent firebreaks against wildfires.

At our farm, we have introduced a livestock farmer with a flock of 120 sheep. This also protects our fields and buildings. But this individual approach and its replication will not be enough; we must envision the establishment of an entirely new sector at the department level, creating meadows, nourishing the land to grow orchards and vegetable production. Extensive livestock farming is a lever for more general transformation of the agricultural model. It’s a first step.



What are the obstacles and difficulties that hinder its emergence?

These are systemic problems found elsewhere: the difficulty in promoting agricultural installation. The conditions for production here are harsh, so it’s not very desirable: public policy support must be greater. Our territory and the Mediterranean area, in general, should be recognized as being in a “major natural disability situation” due to climate warming.

This would provide more financial aid to future livestock farmers, like in mountain areas. Ultimately, we need to reevaluate the Common Agricultural Policy and redirect funds differently. Should we massively support intensive, productivist viticulture, or other models of installation in Corbières?

The second huge barrier is the valorization of local production. As long as our meat is undervalued, there will not be massive installations. The importation of sheep meat from the other end of the planet, which floods the market with unbeatable prices, should be questioned. We need protectionist measures to ensure that valorization benefits producers, with minimum entry prices on the territory.



Can this fire serve as a wake-up call?

I certainly hope for a surge. It is in times of crisis that we evolve. The most important thing is not to remain passive, not to wait for everything from public authorities. We need to organize, collectively come out of helplessness and dispossession, and democratically rethink things as citizens, inhabitants. We are not naive. We see that the intensive agricultural model will seek to maintain itself, that it is not fundamentally questioned. Media offensives also use the tragedies that strike us to further polarize our society, by blaming ecologists and meat consumers. We reject these divisions: to heal our wounds and think of a future together, the time is for solidarity rather than division. We will lead our reconstruction from the bottom up, at the local level. And it will be revolutionary.