I'm a freelancer based in the Gàidhealtachd who works in food, farming and land and looks how these all intersect with culture. Across the UK there were once traditions of transhumance dairying, where livestock were taken into the hills through the summer months to graze and be milked. Where I am, this was called the 'shieling system'. These practices have all but died away.

Today in the UK, the two seemingly binary worlds of farming and food production, and rewilding and habitat restoration are often pitched as being in conflict with each other. But I believe a return to seasonal conservation grazing would offer a third option bridging the two.

In the Alps, these practices still continue and have survived and thrived largely because their producers have organised themselves as cooperatives. I'll explore the social, physical, and financial and legal infrastructure within these cooperative ecosystems which enable Alpine cheeses and the landscapes they come from to flourish. Studying how these Alpine regions organise themselves cooperatively will help inform how to go about reinventing a viable shieling system that's able to meet the needs and challenges of today.