Is the increase of scale in the tropics a pathway to smallholders? Dimension and ecological zone effect on the mixed crop-livestock farms

Abstract

Mixed crop-livestock farms are widely spread in different tropical regions in the world; they contribute to food security, rural development, sustainability and poverty alleviation. The effect of scale on performance of dual purpose (DP) cattle farms was evaluated in two Mexican ecological zones: dry (DT) and wet tropics (WT). In 2011, a questionnaire of 184 items distributed into technical and social characteristics was applied to a representative sample of 3,285 farms with 50 or less cows (0.97%). The farms were classified into three groups according to their dimension: very small (1-9 cows), small (10-19 cows) and medium (20-50 cows). A general linear model (GLM) with two factors and their interactions was applied. Significant effects in dimension and ecological zone were found as well as seven interactions between both factors (p<0.05). Native pastures were used in all farms for grazing. However, small farms' herds frequently grazed on cultivated pastures and on crop residues (p<0.05). Medium farms showed the highest grazing surface, but in the WT silage and green fodder were used while in the DT dry fodders were used (p<0.001). The interactions between factors showed a bigger specialization in milk production in DT farms, whereas WT farms were more specialized in meat production. The mixed crop-livestock system in tropic region requires an increase in herd size according to farm's own productive structure, which is strongly influenced by the ecological zone. The systems would improve with the active participation of smallholders to identify and achieve best practices, higher technological adoption level and with an effective support from public and private Institutions.Additional keywords: marginalization; subsistence; dual purpose; tropics; resilience. Abbreviations used: AU (animal unit); DP (dual purpose); DT (dry tropic); GLM (general linear model); UW (unit of work); WT (wet tropic).Authors' contributions: Conceived and designed the experiments: JRQ and JAE. Performed the experiments: JRQ, JR and JAE. Analyzed the data: AGM and JP. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: EA, CPH and JR. Wrote the paper: AGM, JRQ and CPH.Citation: Rangel, J.; Espinosa, J. A.; De Pablos-Heredero, C.; Rivas, J.; Perea, J.; Angón, E.; García-Martínez, A. (2017). Is the increase of scale in the tropics a pathway to smallholders? Dimension and ecological zone effect on the mixed crop-livestock farms.

Structural and Technological Characterization of Tropical Smallholder Farms of Dual-Purpose Cattle in Mexico

“…They indicate that producers should increase dimension at a great extent, otherwise a significant number of smallholders will be expelled from the system and will have to become laborers in their community or migrate to urban areas to find employment [32]. The increase of scale and intensification is an important aspect, although it is not enough for reaching a sustainable development in the tropics [2,7,10,11,17]. Our results showed that size was not associated to technological level.…”

“…The technological areas of genetics, reproduction, and animal health were the most implemented. The management and feeding areas need to be supported in order to develop adequate technologies for wet zones as record systems, grazing planting, crop residues, and adopting the mechanical milking [2,7,8,13,16,28].…”

“…Therefore, there is a wide range of technical scenarios. United Nations for Food and Agriculture (FAO) and Pan American Dairy Federation (FEPALE) propose two types of organization for primary production in Latin American and Caribbean (ALC) [1], pastoralism and specialized production systems mainly in southern countries, and dual-purpose farms in the rest of ALC countries [2].…”

“…A review of the main studies focused on the typologies of DP farms in ALC countries can be seen in supplementary materials (Table S1). However, they involve some methodological shortcomings such as: (a) In general, very unequal farms are compared (intensive with subsistence farms), resulting in predictable groups and classified as a supposed dual purpose [8]; (b) the farms are unequal regarding size and technologies, so, large, medium or small farms could prevail [6]; (c) in the principal components analysis (PCA), the number of variables is usually limited to the first two or three components [2,5]; (d) PCA or factorial analysis (FA) and cluster analysis are generally used, although there are other efficient methodological approaches with qualitative variables as multiple correspondence analysis (CMA) [11,12]; (e) the typologies are frequently elaborated at a local level, but typologies of country level or ecological zones are nonexistent [2,6,11,13].…”

Factores que determinan la adopción del ensilaje en unidades de producción ganaderas en el trópico seco del noroeste de México

“…Este nivel de adopción es bajo, y concuerda con estudios realizados en sistemas de producción de bovinos de doble propósito en México, que han identificado que solo entre el 1 % (Vilaboa & Díaz, 2009) y 6 % (Chalate et al, 2010) de los productores llevan a cabo la práctica de ensilaje. Un estudio reciente que analiza información de 2.187 unidades de producción en el trópico seco de México identificó que solo el 17,7 % de las unidades de producción realizan la práctica de ensilaje; este mismo estudio analiza la información por tamaño del rancho, e identifica que el mayor porcentaje de adopción (21,9 %) se encuentra con productores de tamaño medio, que tienen entre 20 y 50 vacas reproductoras (Rangel et al, 2017b).…”