Ganaderos Familiares Gauchos : ¿Una opción hacia la producción sustentable?

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This article seeks to identify and understand a type of livestock farming with scarce visibility in the academic world and, until recently, generally ignored by policy makers: the gaucho family cattle-breeding, situated in the Pampa biome of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. In the family cattle ? breeding system, work is mainly performed by the family group in native grasslands, and the land tenure is transmitted along generations. The biome where gaucho livestock farming is located - the Pampa ? has also been frequently neglected by environmental policy makers. While agriculture and intensive cattle-breeding have usually negative impacts on the environment, family livestock farming has survived for the last 200 years in relative harmony with the Pampa landscape, respecting its biodiversity. The expression of this consolidated relationship (man-animal-landscape) is the gaucho identity, which is threatened by the challenges of globalization such as the increasing land concentration, the advance of large-scale agriculture (especially soja, eucalyptus and pines) over livestock land, the relative low revenue of extensive cattle-raising and the consequent migration of youngsters to the cities. Only a deep understanding of the values and traditions of gaucho cattle-breeders, external to the technic - economical rationality of revenue maximization, can explain the persistence of family cattle-breeders to maintain their livelihoods. Our objectives are: ⅰ) to clarify the concept of family cattle-breeding; ⅱ) to present the first results of a comparative study about the values, identities and livelihoods of family cattle-breeders (beef producers) in the Pampa biome; ⅲ) to demonstrate that some types of breeding cannot be reduced to merely economic activities, and to explain why extensive grazing led by families have less environmental impacts than soy and corn agriculture or other mercantilist activities; ⅳ) to foster the creation of differentiated public policies permitting the subsistence of the gaucho livelihood and the Pampa biome, such as a) the adaptation of traditional extensive grazing to improve its environmental, social and economic sustainability in an increasingly competitive world; b) the creation of specific environmental education programs from a bottom-up perspective, c) the implementation of environmental certificates.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Introduccion
• Ⅰ. Agricultura Familiar - Una definicion problematica
• Ⅱ. El bioma Pampa - Una paradoja ecologica
• Ⅲ. La agriculturizacion de la Pampa
• Ⅳ. Ganaderia Familiar Gaucha: ¿Sustentable o no?
• Ⅴ. La ganaderia, segun los ganaderos
• Ⅵ. Primeros resultados
• Conclusion
• Abstract
• Bibliografia