Determinants of adoption of integrated systems by cattle farmers in the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil
- PDF / 325,548 Bytes
- 15 Pages / 547.087 x 737.008 pts Page_size
- 32 Downloads / 188 Views
(0123456789().,-volV) ( 01234567 89().,-volV)
Determinants of adoption of integrated systems by cattle farmers in the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil Hildo Meirelles de Souza Filho . Marcela Mello Branda˜o Vinholis . Marcelo Jose´ Carrer . Roberto Bernardo
Received: 27 November 2019 / Accepted: 27 October 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The level of diffusion of integrated croplivestock systems (ICLS) and integrated livestockforestry systems (ILFS) among cattle farmers in Brazil is still low, despite the environmental and economic benefits and governmental policy support. The present study aims at identifying the factors that determine the adoption of these systems in the State of Sa˜o Paulo, Brazil. The theory of adoption and diffusion of agricultural innovations takes into consideration several economic and non-economic determinants. Data from 175 farms and multinomial logit models were used to test hypotheses on the role played by farms’ scale, farms’ topography, farms’ type of soil, farmers’ knowledge, farmers’ capacity for innovation, availability of local facilities for grain trade, extension service, and credit supply. The results highlighted the important role played by farmers’ human and physical resources when adopting these systems. Knowledge, scalable agricultural land and fixed capital for crop farming being the most relevant ones. Access to credit and extension service helped to overcome lack of physical capital and knowledge. Farmers with innovative capacity were the ones who showed to be more H. M. de Souza Filho (&) M. J. Carrer R. Bernardo Universidade Federal de Sa˜o Carlos, Sa˜o Carlos, SP, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] M. M. B. Vinholis Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecua´ria, Sa˜o Carlos, SP, Brazil
prone to adopt. Availability of local infrastructure for grain trading facilitated the adoption of ICLS. Adoption of ILFS turn out to be an alternative option in slopping land and sandy soils. Results shed light on strategies to accelerate the diffusion of those systems. Keywords Agricultural technology adoption Integrated systems Cattle farming Agricultural sustainability
Introduction Integrated Crop-Livestock-Forest Systems have been proposed as a more sustainable technological option for livestock production. In these systems, agricultural and livestock activities are carried out in the same area, involving intercropping, in combination or in rotation, in which complementarity and positive synergic effects are observed. Several studies have focused on the environmental and economic benefits of integrated systems over conventional monocultural systems (e.g. Balbino et al. 2011; Salton et al. 2014; Carauta et al. 2018). These diversified integrated systems would provide agronomic and ecological benefits such as improvements in soil structure, water infiltration, nutrient cycling, soil organic carbon sequestration, soil biological diversity, and controlling of weed, insects and disease populations. Economic benefits arise and have also been observed such as cost
123
Data Loading...
