Animal production and economic viability of integrated crop livestock systems

Abstract

Integrated crop-livestock-forest system appears as strategy to reduce pasture recovery costs and diversify farmer’s income with the sale of the wood of eucalyptus trees. The objective of this work was to evaluate the animal performance and economic viability of systems without shade availability (ICL: Integrated Crop-Livestock) and with two tree densities (ICLF-1L: Integrated Crop-Livestock-Forest, 196 trees ha-1; ICLF-3L: Integrated Crop-Livestock-Forest, 448 trees ha-1). Sixty castrated Nellore cattle were used to evaluate performance during rearing and finishing. For economic analysis, the cash receipts, cash outflow, cash flow, net cash flow and internal rate of return (IRR) were evaluated between December 2012 and June 2016. The performance of the animals was lower in ICLF-3L system (P<0.05) due to the higher density of trees, and consequently, greater shading of the pasture. In ICL and ICLF-1L systems, the revenue from soybean and corn fully paid for the costs of implementing the systems, and ICLF-1L still covered the cost of forest deployment. In ICLF-3L, the costs were almost completely covered. The reduction in the productive indices also reduced the revenue from the slaughter of cattle in ICLF-3L, with the highest revenue in ICL and ICLF-1L, respectively. In addition, the IRR in ICL and ICLF-1L was higher. ICLFs contribute to the amortization of the recovery costs of the pastures and the implantation of eucalyptus. The ICL and ICLF-1L is more economically viable tham ICFL-3L until the fourth year of implementation.