To maintain milk production in European less favoured regions, farmers must develop high quality cheese production. Although traditional milk production is based on grazing and milk production targeted at spring and summer, many changes have lead to wide diversity in dairy farming systems. To contribute to the design and assessment of scenarios for the evolution of farming systems, we study how farmers change nowadays their grassland management. In this paper, we show how changes in grassland management must be consistent with farmers'strategies of milk production, and how local milk production context could contribute to the development of these changes. Two studies were made in 3 areas in the southern "Massif Central" (France). The first study consists in 24 farmers' interviews. It describes how farmers have developed three different management systems of grassland and livestock productions to adapt the traditional dairy farming system and to maintain the consistency of farming system functioning. Based on the Laguiole cheese production, the 20 interviews of the second study have shown that the new requirements of the PDO cheese specifications (abandonment of maize silage and inducements to feed just hay) has lead to three main technical changes (a gradual or an instant change-over to using just hay). In this context, the milk price and the local dairy cooperative agreement have favoured the rapid change-over to using just hay.