I don't know which mountains you were hiking, but the cows in the alps remain there because they get huge subsidies[1] to do so (beyond the subsidies all agricu

I don't know which mountains you were hiking, but the cows in the alps remain there because they get huge subsidies[1] to do so (beyond the subsidies all agriculture gets). The argument being that it's useful and traditional and there's no way to compete under such difficult circumstances. Anyway, I couldn't find any numbers, but I expect it makes up a small percentage of overall milk production, even in countries like Austria or Switzerland, which have a lot of mountainous area. If we exclusively produces milk that way, it'd be a luxury good. Again, I haven't looked up the numbers for Normandy or England, but I expect it's similar to Northern Germany, where you do see cows in pastures (which is lovely, I love cows, they seem very happy), but a) most of them are fed additional grains, b) during the winter you'll see much fewer and c) for every cow you see there, there must be a dozen being kept in a stable year-round. Source: cow farmers in the family. [1] e.g. https://www.bluehendesoesterreich.at/bauernlexikon/bergbauer-bergbaeuerin https://www.bluehendesoesterreich.at/bauernlexikon/bergbauer...