Steps toward Sustainable Ranching: An Emergy Evaluation of Conventional and Holistic Management in Chiapas, Mexico
Members of a holistic ranching ‘‘club” in the Frailesca region of Chiapas, Mexico have moved away from decades of conventional management by eliminating the use of burns and agrochemicals believed to decrease the biodiversity and forest cover of ranch lands, and by implementing sophisticated systems of rotational grazing and diversifying the use of trees. Holistic ranches were found to have double the “emergy” (embodied-energy or “energy memory”) sustainability index values of conventional ranches. The results from this study show that productivity can be maintained as the sustainability of rural dairy ranches is increased, and that local knowledge and understanding of the surrounding ecosystem can drive positive environmental change in production systems.
Sustainability of holistic and conventional cattle ranching in the seasonally dry tropics of Chiapas, Mexico, Decision Making
Eighteen (18) conventional and seven (7) holistic, dual-purpose ranches were studied using three sets of sustainability metrics combining economic, social, technological, and environmental indicators. Holistic ranchers have more pasture divisions, higher grazing pressure, greater lengths of time between pasture burns, greater milk productivity, larger forest reserves, lower cow and calf mortality, purchase less hay and feed, and use less herbicides and pesticides than their conventional neighbors, with holistic ranches demonstrating superiority for nine of ten indicators. Higher soil respiration, deeper topsoil, increased earthworm presence, more tightly closed herbaceous canopies, and marginally greater forage availability were found in holistic ranches, suggesting that holistic management strategies are leading to greater ecological and economic sustainability.
