Why they do what that they do? A study of purposes and strategic rules of Uruguayan's extensive beef farmers

Farmers must make decisions that are taken by different criteria, which are in all cases personal and circumstantial. From a technical point of view, at the moment to propose any change in the farm structure, or any application of some particular technique -or even in the government policy making- it is essential to know why a farm is like it is and why the farmers do what they do. To know the goals for which a farm operates seems to be a priority, or viewed in the opposite way, to ignore the farmer's objectives can lead to mistakes when planning any farm intervention programs. The objective of this study is to describe the farmers main Purposes (P) and the Strategic Rules (SR) associated, as they are defined by the Global Approach method. For this research twenty case farms were analyzed by two methods: Multivariate simple correspondence analysis and a text concept linking software (Redes2009). The results show that the most frequent P's were: i) "Those related to patrimony", ii) "Those related to guarantee a money income", and iii) "Those related to keep a rural way of life". The main SR associated to these P were, respectively, i) "To assure incomes" and "To keep herd as capital"; ii) "To manage work and family participation at farm tasks" and "To keep a comfortable way of life and life's quality"; and iii) "To assure incomes" and "To handle the indebtedness". The SR defined as "To assure incomes" was the most frequent, and it is strongly related with two economical P (i and ii, stated above), and to others SR like "To reduce cost and money management" and "To handle internal and external information". In conclusion, the most frequently mentioned P was related to economic and social issues, linked with economic and social SR. The agro-ecological P per se was no present in this study.

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	Dieguez, Francisco, Tourrand, Jean-François
Format:	conference_item biblioteca
Language:	eng
Published:	IFSA
Subjects:	L01 - Élevage - Considérations générales, E80 - Économie familiale et artisanale, E20 - Organisation, administration et gestion des entreprises ou exploitations agricoles,
Online Access:	http://agritrop.cirad.fr/567476/ http://agritrop.cirad.fr/567476/1/document_567476.pdf
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