Identification of beef production farms in the Pampas and Campos area that stand out in economic and environmental performance

Grazing management for more resilient mixed livestock farming systems on native grasslands of southern South America

“…The high investment needed for improving the herbage quantity and quality in the long term increases the financial risk of the farm, and the exotic grass and legume species sown may be less adapted to recurrent drought and less resistant to these events, risking productivity. While this intensification pathway has been promoted as “sustainable intensification” from an economic and environmental perspective (Dick, Abreu da Silva, & Dewes, ; de Oliveira Silva et al, ; Pashaei et al, ), recent studies show that higher productivity does not necessarily translate in higher income, and can even worsen environmental performance as measured by biodiversity, fossil fuel energy consumption and nutrient balances (Modernel et al, ).…”

“…Uruguay is part of a large biome known as the Rio de la Plata grasslands , where native grasslands and cattle have coexisted for the last 400 years. There is a high diversity of farming systems in the region (Modernel et al, ), but two main types of farms can be distinguished: reproduction or “cow–calf” and meat production or “finishing” farms (Becoña, Astigarraga, & Picasso, ; Modernel et al, ). This study focused on cow–calf systems, which represent 53% of farming systems in the country (MGAP, ).…”

Understanding Farm Diversity to Promote Agroecological Transitions

“…Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to generate non-correlated principal components (PC's), and cluster analysis for grouping farms into clusters based on their position on the PCA axes [22,28,43]. We did not include the variable "number of food items produced on the farm consumed by the family" in the multivariate analysis, because it was strongly correlated with the variable "number of crop products" obtained on the farm (correlation coefficient >0.9; Supplementary Materials Figure S1).…”

“…The second challenge refers to an adequate methodological approach to understanding the relation between farm typologies and transition processes. Several researchers have argued that classifying and characterizing different types of farms in a way that is both precise and relevant requires the use of both quantitative and qualitative indicators and methods [27,28]. Others added that for a precise and relevant characterisation, researchers must engage with farmers' own knowledge, values and aspirations [29].…”

Mobilizing Ecological Processes for Herbivore Production: Farmers and Researchers Learning Together

“…Multicriteria optimization methods such as Pareto frontiers have been successfully applied in various types of agricultural landscapes (Groot et al, 2012;Andreotti et al, 2018;Verhagen et al, 2018) to identify management options or farms that outperform others. In the Rio de la Plata grasslands, Modernel et al (2018) identified outstanding beef farms in terms of economic and environmental performance. Performance was assessed through indicators built from field data and interviews collected from 280 farms.…”