Characteristics and management of the production system of cattle in the small Michapan River basin

Abstract

Given the shortage of research on the current situation of livestock activity in the small Michapan River basin, of which there are only evidence that environmental problems in recent years are more frequent, and are reflected by increased deforestation due of land use change mainly toward livestock and maize, causing droughts, floods, erosion, production deficiency, etc., which harm the economy and the environment; it was proposed to study the characteristics of the production system of cattle in this small basin, which considers the municipalities of Acayucan, Hueyapan de Ocampo, San Juan Evangelista, Sayula de Aleman and San Pedro Soteapan. The research was conducted in 2012. The assumption is that the social and economic characteristics of producers are the main factors that define the technological levels of the production system of cattle. The technique used was the survey as data collection instrument was designed a questionnaire on socio-economic, environmental and production systems. The sample size was 421 farmers, but only 140 of them answered that they have a production system of cattle. For information processing, we used the Microsoft Office Excel software. Three systems of cattle production were identified, that are: 42% beef cattle, 28% milk cattle and 30% double purpose cattle. Was determined that the production system is under the traditional technological management.