Ruminants on the mountain

Tyrol’s agriculture: you can’t do without cows and co.

The Tiroler Grauvieh is a breed of cattle that is adapted to grazing on alpine slopes.(Bild: Naturschutzbund)

Most farms in Tyrol mainly produce milk because the Alps are ideal for it. Ruminants provide food from land that would otherwise be unusable for us. Other forms of agriculture are rare. Yet the topography would certainly allow for alternatives.

In Tyrol's stables, you mostly find ruminants, while grass is the main crop in our fields. Grassland-based farming with ruminants is a tried and tested system: "It simply makes sense in mountainous areas," explains Michael Traugott, professor at the Research Center for Mountain Agriculture at the University of Innsbruck. You can't plant a maize field on steep mountain slopes. In turn, we humans cannot eat the grass that grows there. "But ruminants can," explains Traugott.