Abstract
The assessment of the relationships between farm management systems and nature conservation may help in the design of more efficient strategies to uphold economic benefits and biodiversity conservation. To our knowledge, this is the first work in Brazil to study the relationship between farm conservation status and technification level. Here, we test the hypothesis that dairy farms with higher levels of technification have a higher percentage of natural vegetation and connectivity, and that differences in environment features between farms explain their conservation status. We obtained variables related to the level of technification such as feed, milking, sanitary control and breeding management systems. We show that farmers with a higher level of technification, such as artificial insemination in cattle breeding, tended to conserve a higher percentage of natural vegetation, as well as larger farms with a higher percentage of riparian forest. The adoption of artificial insemination is associated with other technification systems such as a forage diet, milking method and frequency and sanitary control. It is also significantly related to higher milk productivity. Our novel results point to a positive effect of technification on the conservation of natural vegetation, suggesting that economic incentives and programs aimed at increasing technification in cattle breeding may increase dairy production and conservation within the study area. Our findings also show an effect of larger areas of riparian forests, which are protected by Brazilian policy, in the conservation status of dairy farms.
Highlights
Introduction published maps and institutional affilThe trade-off between food production and biodiversity conservation is one of the major challenges for policymakers in the Anthropocene [1]
Farmers declared legal reserve area equal to the minimum required by Brazilian environmental law in Central-Brazil (20% of the farm area, Table S1), 84% of the farms had lower percentage of natural vegetation than the minimum required for legal reserve (Figure 2a, Supplementary Table S1)
We found that selective breeding method (p = 0.046) significantly explained the variaWe found that selective breeding method (p = 0.046) significantly explained the varition in percentage of natural vegetation among dairy farms (Tables 2 and S4)
Summary
Introduction published maps and institutional affilThe trade-off between food production and biodiversity conservation is one of the major challenges for policymakers in the Anthropocene [1]. The expansion of agriculture and the use of unsustainable practices are the main threats to terrestrial natural habitats [2] and to biodiversity conservation in tropical and temperate regions [3]. While agriculture expanded from 265 ha to 1471 million ha from 1700 to 1990, pastures expanded from 524 ha to 3451 million ha in the same period [5] and to 3340 million ha by 2005 [6]. This expansion is mainly due to the increasing pressure to produce animal protein, mainly from cattle. The global cattle livestock population was estimated to be 1.5 billion in 2012, producing 67 billion kg of beef carcass and 625 billion kg iations
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