CONTEXT

Family-run cow-calf farms based on native grasslands exhibit low economic and social sustainability, as reflected in low family incomes and high workloads. Experimental results have shown that pasture–herd interaction management could improve native grasslands and animal productivity.

OBJECTIVE

This paper analyzes the extent to which the sustainability of family-run livestock farms based on native grasslands could be enhanced by a systemic redesign informed by ecological intensification practices. The research questions address the initial state of farm sustainability, key bottlenecks to improving farm sustainability, and changes in sustainability criteria achieved over three years of farm redesign.

METHODS

The study was executed as part of a multi-level co-innovation project in Uruguay in which a team of scientist-practitioners and seven farm families participated in farm characterization, diagnosis, and redesign. The farm characterization took the form of indicators to describe the farms' management and bio-physical subsystems. Redesign plans were negotiated between the research team and the farmers. Frequent monitoring and evaluation cycles enabled finetuning across the years of implementation.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION

Improvements were observed in the economic indicators gross margin (+55%), return to labor (+71%), and family income (+53%) and in the social indicator workload (−22%), and the environmental indicators bird diversity and ecosystem integrity index were maintained or increased slightly. These changes were explained by the uptake of coherent sets of ecological intensification practices causing changes in forage height (+30%), forage allowance (+69%), pregnancy (+22), weight of weaning calf per mating cow (+32%), and presence of tussocks (+65%). Ecological intensification principles resulted in synergistic positive effects between productivity–biodiversity tradeoffs and the scope for enhanced farm resilience and stability.

SIGNIFICANCE

Cow-calf family-run farms can be transformed to produce positive environmental and social effects and viable economic results. The implementation of projects in a co-innovation context may be taken as a guide to scaling up and scaling out the ecological intensification of livestock production on native grasslands, contributing to an extension system at the national level with the aim of improving cow-calf systems sustainability.

中文翻译：

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生态密集型原理在原生草原上的牲畜场系统重新设计中的应用：以乌拉圭罗沙的共同创新为例

语境

家庭经营的牛犊养殖场以原生草原为基础，经济和社会可持续性较低，这反映在家庭收入低和工作量高的情况下。实验结果表明，牧场与牧民的互动管理可以提高原生草原和动物的生产力。

客观的

本文分析了在生态集约化实践的基础上进行系统的重新设计，可以在多大程度上增强以原生草原为基础的家庭经营的牲畜场的可持续性。研究问题涉及农场可持续性的初始状态，改善农场可持续性的主要瓶颈，以及在三年的农场重新设计中实现的可持续性标准的变化。

方法

这项研究是在乌拉圭进行的一项多层次合作创新项目的一部分，该项目中一组科学家，从业人员和七个农场家庭参与了农场的表征，诊断和重新设计。农场表征采用指标的形式来描述农场的管理和生物物理子系统。研究团队和农民之间就重新设计计划进行了谈判。频繁的监视和评估周期使得在整个实施过程中都可以进行微调。

结果与结论

经济指标的毛利率（+ 55％），劳动回报（+ 71％）和家庭收入（+ 53％）以及社会指标的工作量（−22％）和环境指标鸟类的多样性都有改善生态系统完整性指数保持或略有提高。这些变化可以通过采用一系列连贯的生态集约实践来解释，这些实践导致饲草高度（+ 30％），饲草津贴（+ 69％），妊娠（+22），每头交配母牛的断奶小牛体重（+ 32％）发生变化。 ）和草丛（+ 65％）的存在。生态集约化原则在生产力与生物多样性的权衡与增强农场的适应力和稳定性的范围之间产生了协同的积极影响。

意义

牛犊家庭经营的农场可以进行改造，以产生积极的环境和社会影响并取得可行的经济成果。可以在共同创新的背景下执行项目，作为扩大和扩大本地草原上牲畜生产的生态集约化的指南，为国家一级的推广系统做出贡献，以改善牛犊牛系统可持续性。