2. MRH Environmental Impacts

2.1 Range Utilization

2.1.1 Direct Indicators

2.1.1.1 Soil Structure-Erosion-Fertility

See Sections II-2.1.1.2 and III-2.1.1.1; for soil indicators related to forest utilization and other domains, see V-2.2.1.1, V-2.3.1.2, IV-2.3.1.1, IV-2.5.11, and IV-2.8.1.1.

2.1.1.2 Water Quality/Pesticide Residue

See Sections II-2.1.1.3, III-2.1.1.3, and IV-2.1.1.3.

2.1.1.3 Air Quality

See Sections III-2.1.1.5 and IV-2.4.1.1

2.1.1.4 Vegetation

For forest utilization, see sections II-2.2.1.4, IV-2.2.1.3, and V-2.2.1.3.

2.1.1.5 Habitat/Biodiversity

For indicators related to forest utilization, see Section II-2.8.1.2.

2.1.2 Indirect Indicators

2.1.2.2 Feeds and Feeding

See Section IV-2.1.2.2.

2.1.2.4 Land Use and Land Rights

2.1.2.4.1 Introduction

Sustainable use of natural resources requires the creation of incentives that deter their overexploitation. This implies the need for rights structures that enhance long-term value for resources by the people who most directly affect them. Level of livestock production is therefore not only affected by improved technological and management inputs but by cultural values and practices affecting land use and by formal and informal rights structures that determine individual access to land.

Land-use type and intensity is determined by several factors including, climate, soil fertility, composition of natural vegetation, prevalent diseases, availability and cost of land, water, labor and capital, access to technology and markets, management skills, cultural and religious values, and government policy interventions and international political and trade relations. Livestock production systems can be ranked from extensive to intensive systems and can be grouped into various management categories ranging from extensive-static and transhumance systems to animal confinement systems (Stuth et al. 1993). Extensive livestock production, where animal diet selection is generally unrestricted, is frequently relegated to marginal lands, while more intensive livestock systems, with various levels of human control over diet selection, are more frequently found in more fertile areas near centers of higher population density.

Land rights include the rights of individuals or groups of individuals to use the resources associated with a specified land area, exclude others from using these resources, and transfer these use rights to others. Such rights may be ranked along a continuum of increasing social control or more generally into four broad categories of property rights regimes: open access (resources are unowned and access to them is free and open), communal property (resource use rights are assigned equally, with varying degrees of control, within specific groups), private property (where individuals control the use and transfer of resources), and state property (Murphree 1993). Variously regulated individual property rights prevail in many developed countries. By contrast, common property regimes dominate where group identity persists and where the costs of enforcing individual property rights exceed the value of resources (due to relatively low pressure on resources). However, since natural resources may defy allocation of simple individual property rights, and the disintegration of common property regimes (through social decay) has led to resource degradation, central governments have frequently claimed license to manage public resources, such as communal land. Since communal grazing resources continue to be widely used for livestock production throughout temperate regions and the humid tropics, a more detailed discussion of such resources is warranted.

Common property is land, including some or all of the edaphic and biological resources associated with it, that is held in common by a varyingly well-defined group of people. Hardin (1968) proposed that use of common resources (e.g., grazing) inevitably leads to overexploitation, because the private benefit of using an additional unit of the resource exceeds the private cost, the costs of resource degradation being shared by all group members with access to the resource. However, since group identity is generally central for individual well-being, "outcomes to other group members, or to the group as a whole, come to be perceived as one's own" (Brewer 1979). Runge (1981) thus argued that in "village economies" there is an interdependence of choice and individual cost functions are not separable. He concluded that overuse of resources is likely to occur when interdependent individuals are unable to coordinate their actions, which is most likely to happen when communities consist of individuals with markedly different resource endowments and constraints.

In order to be successful, common property regimes effecting livestock must consist of a well-defined group of authorized users, a well-defined forage resource that the group will use, and a set of internal mechanisms to govern and enforce the use of the resource (Bromley 1989). Many researchers have shown, that common property institutions have survived for long periods in a diversity of cultural settings (e.g., Ciriacy-Wantrup and Bishop 1975, Artz 1985, Runge 1986, Ostrom 1990).

Degradation of rangelands in developing countries has frequently resulted from the dissolution of local-level institutional arrangements whose purpose was to facilitate sustainable resource use patterns (Bromley and Cernea 1989). In practice, central government mechanisms imposed to reduce resource degradation have not only been costly but have often weakened traditional institutions and fostered symbiotic relationships among a few self-interested herdsman and self-interested regulatory authorities (Artz 1985). The effects on resources of insensitive regulatory policies are ubiquitous. This is particularly significant for this report on land use and land rights as a social indicator for livestock production because grazing resources in developing countries are frequently used communally.

Increased agricultural production efficiency, through a continuous flow of technologically based intensification, is critical for the rapid urbanization occurring in developing countries (Simpson 1993). Without increased productivity, rising food demand from increasing human populations will inevitably increase environmental stress. There is likely to be a general shift to intensive production systems which will increase the demand for grain, especially for milk production and for poultry and pigs (Simpson 1993). Economic development and radically improved standards of living for rural and urban people require the promotion of commercially orientated agricultural and livestock production, and a concomitant reduction of marginal and subsistence level production. In livestock production, much of the technology and management practices available for increasing production intensity are too complex for smaller producers to apply them effectively.

2.1.2.4.2 Cultural and Religious Institutions

The level of a nations economic development, combined with cultural mores, has a strong influence on livestock systems. For example, milk consumption is low in many areas where lactose tolerance is low and where land is inhabited by tribal nomads there is little interest in expanding production.

The only existing international instruments that deal specifically with indigenous and tribal peoples' rights are the ILO's Indigenous and Tribal Populations Conventions (No. 107) and Recommendation (No. 104) of 1957 (Swepston and Plant 1985). Since then, significant changes have occurred for these populations through government measures, pressure on land, and actions by organizations of indigenous peoples themselves. Some states have now recognized in law the right of indigenous people to a system of land tenure and land ownership that is different to that applying to the rest of the population. Yet in many areas, especially in Asia and South America, migration of other populations into areas inhabited by indigenous and tribal peoples has led to violent conflict. Perhaps the most important change has been the establishment of a number of indigenous peoples' organizations at the national, regional, and international levels, which are increasingly demanding the enforcement of the rights their members enjoy under national and international law. For indigenous and tribal people everywhere, security of land tenure is a prerequisite for the continuation of their traditional life-styles and for their development. For indigenous peoples “the whole range of emotional, cultural, spiritual and religious considerations is present where relationships with land is concerned” (Swepston and Plant 1985). Communal systems of land tenure were abolished during the heyday of nineteenth century liberalism, when only private property systems were recognized as legitimate, but legal reforms during the twentieth century have once again recognized the existence of communal forms of land ownership for indigenous peoples. Such people show an almost exclusive preference for communal ownership, and the introduction of private property systems has so far been a major factor accounting for the disintegration of Indian lands in the America's.

According to Scoones (1989), cattle are not primarily raised for meat, but as a way of capital savings and as an important source of draft power and manure. In communal land households, access to stock (either through ownership or through loaning and sharing relationships) correlates closely with the extent of arable production and in most communal lands there is an overall shortage of draught animals. Thus communal land producers want to maximize the availability of animals for manure and draught per unit area.

An equal distribution of property among daughters and sons is the overriding pattern of inheritance in Latin America (Chasteen 1991). Though families used various strategies to avoid fragmentation of property, inheritance law exerted a steady gravitational pull. Thus great estates arose and eroded within a few generations to be replaced by others with different boundaries. As the scale of landholdings declined violent intraclass conflicts arose between neighboring landowners. In Brazil's southern borderland, inheritance laws accordingly resulted in little change to the techniques of ranching during the early nineteenth century.

Vaidyanathan et al. (1982) state that while the Hindu belief that cattle may not be slaughtered because they are sacred (apotheosis) has influenced the management of bovine resources, this does not account for the variations in bovine age, sex, and species ratios in India. These ratios were found to be systematically adjusted to demographic, technological, economic, and environmental conditions. Among cattle, adult males outnumber cows, except for older animals, but among buffalo, females outnumber males, and the sex ratio increases smoothly with age. This is because the cattle are generally better adapted to dry conditions in much of India, large numbers of small cheap draft animals are needed to cultivate the prevalent dry, hard-packed soils, and the dominant use of buffalo is for milk production. Nondairy breeds dominate among cattle and male calves are generally preserved, while dairy breeds are dominant among buffalo and male buffalo calves are generally culled.

Harbaugh (1992) cites the following quotation, made in 1907 by Theodore Roosevelt: "There is nothing more important to this country [U.S.] than the perpetuation of our system of medium sized farms worked by their owners." This commentwas prompted by increasing awareness that, due to a lack of security of land tenure, tenants seldom paid any attention to maintaining soil fertility in the United States. Census findings that tenants kept disproportionately fewer cattle and planted less soil-building legumes than owners led commentators to infer that tenants depleted soil more rapidly. The most critical factor in the lack of diversification away from grain crops was economic, particularly where farms were leased for cash rather than on the basis of share cropping. Since short-term (one-year) leases created disincentives for tenants to invest in soil fertility, significant numbers of tenants resisted conservation practices because landlords failed to provide them with satisfactory leasing arrangements.

Van Vuuren and Ysselstein (1986) state that a similar relationship between land tenure and soil conservation practices has been found to occur more recently in central southwestern Ontario. Practices to upgrade soil were carried out to a lesser extent on rented than owner-operated land, even though the quality of rented land was lower and in greater need of amelioration.

Recently, conflict has increased over the use of public lands in the western United States and increasing federal government intervention in the use of some private lands. The major factor affecting western forest and rangelands is the shift in values placed by an affluent society on livestock production relative to the preservation of habitat for wildlife.

Fleischner (1994) claims that livestock grazing is the most widespread land management practice in the United States. Environmentalists frequently claim that of the 70 percent of the western United States currently being grazed by livestock, including both federal and state land, significant portions have experienced ecosystem and habitat disruption and loss of biodiversity, particularly in riparian areas.

In a study of Oregon's Blue Mountains, riparian areas were found to make up 2 percent of a grazing allotment, but they produced 20 percent of the allotment's total forage, and 80 percent of the forage consumed by cattle came from the small riparian area (Gillis 1991). Based on the damage caused by cattle to the riparian corridors and upland regions, some environmental groups are demanding a complete removal of cattle from public ranges, but many ranchers view any prohibition on grazing as an attack on the western way of life.

Zimmer (1995) found that environmental groups are more generally urging the U.S. secretary of the interior to increase grazing fees significantly on the 280 million acres of public rangeland because, they claim, cheap grazing has degraded land and lead to desertification. Ranchers counter by claiming that they have improved their grazing practices since the turn of the century.

McCarl and Brokken (1985) report that grazing-fee systems most feasible in terms of basic welfare considerations and administrative costs were found to be those based on private rangeland lease rates, government administration costs, and competitive bidding.

Collins and Obermiller (1992), however, found that in Harney County, Oregon, there is market interdependence between the forage prices in the private sector and grazing fees for grazing permits on federal land. This is due to a demand shift from public forage resources to forage produced in private markets as federal grazing fees increase.

Indeed, enforcement of federal regulations have resulted in near revolution in some western states (Kenworthy 1995). For example, local movements in states such as Nevada, 87 percent of which comprised federal land, are openly defying federal regulations as a result of the efforts of Forest Services and Bureau of Land Management officials to alter cattle and sheep grazing practices. The BLM and Forest Service have accordingly canceled the grazing permits of ranchers who refuse to comply with range management directives, only to have the ranchers ignore the cancellations.

On private land in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon, maximizing commodity production (without degradation of base resources and no constraining multiple use considerations) was found to produce the largest economic return from grazing over a wide range of interest rates, management costs, and beef prices when compared with environmental management with and without livestock and both extensive and intensive livestock management with and without cultural practices, respectively (Quigley et al. 1991).

Consumer selectivity increases with increased purchasing power (Preston 1990). Recently, the sale of beef from cattle treated with hormones, to produce lean meat more efficiently than untreated cattle, has met increasing resistance from affluent consumers who are concerned about perceived safety risks associated with the use of hormones. For example, the European Community refuses to import beef from North American cattle treated with anabolic steroids.

2.1.2.4.3 Population Growth

In aboriginal societies, characterized by existence near the margin of subsistence, small populations facilitated enforcement of various behavioral norms through social pressure. For this and other technological reasons, optimal rights structures could include more common property and group enterprises and fewer disjoint individual rights than are workable in developed societies with high populations. Common-property regimes have frequently decayed into open-access regimes because of the failure of the growing community to accommodate increases in total demands on the resource beyond its rate of regeneration.

Increasing demand for meat and milk by growing human populations is the force directing animal production in Central America (Simpson and Conrad 1993). With increasing demand and without government interventions, product prices will rise, permitting more use of inputs and improved animal management which will ultimately lead to greater productivity. Beef and dairy cattle, more than any other domestic animals, provide major opportunities for development agencies and for national and regional development to improve productivity in Central America. Environmental stress experienced in other developing areas not poised to meet such increased demand will also result in Central America if increases continue in farm productivity, especially for feed grains and oilseed meals. Thus, a continuous flow of technology and associated intensification is critical to environmental stability.

In Panama increasing domestic pressure is not the only reason for displacement of people (Partridge 1984). The progressive consolidation of control over land units in the Pacific coast and interior provinces of Panama is the major factor pushing people into the tropical forests elsewhere in the country. Deposed farmers are being transformed into colonists slashing and burning their way into the tropical forests os Panama's Atlantic coast and Darien Peninsula regions. In the interior areas of Panama, the implementation of recent development projects, including farm roads and two slaughterhouses, and the advent of new markets for beef in Colon and Panama City, changed the land and commodity markets. For example, there was a fivefold increase in the size of cattle ranches in the hinterlands of Colon during the 1960s and cattle ranching expanded 442 percent and land values escalated 300 percent from 1950 to 1970. Unlike much of the rest of Central America, where exports to the United States account for some 90 percent of beef produced and where internal consumption has generally declined, increased expatriate expansion increased internal demand for in Panama. These developments have been funded both by multilateral agencies to the national banks of developing countries as well as to private agents of international corporations who invest directly in private sector interests in developing countries. In addition, the indigenous people of Panama have never enjoyed government assistance in terms of agricultural credit, health services, education, or construction of infrastructure. The appearance of colonists from the interior with ties to the ruling group thus represents a conquest of the indigenous mixed farmers people of the coastal lowlands by the interior humid tropics cattle-ranching people of Panama.

2.1.2.4.4 Effects of Colonialism

Since the Muslim inheritance laws result in increasing fragmentation of immovable property, and thus decreasing productive capacity for livestock and other agricultural endeavors, religious endowments have proliferated throughout the Muslim world (Powers 1989). Under such endowments, the usufruct of a revenue-producing property can be assigned while the property itself becomes inalienable in perpetuity and cannot be sold, given away or inherited. This system led to the continued removal of large amounts of land from the free market, frustrating the efforts of colonial settlers in Muslim countries to buy land. Yet in India, the legislative process was supported by the British government to save family endowments in order to maximize the taxable productive base. This attitude subsequently contributed to sectarian conflict between Muslims and their Hindu creditors who tried to seize endowed land as payments for debts.

2.1.2.4.5 Technological Advances

From 1977 to 1987 increased availability and use of mechanical draft power and increased cost of feeding of bullocks, together with the increased quality of milk-producing cattle through crossbreeding and increasing use of artificial insemination, have changed land-use patterns dramatically in the alluvial plains of Hooghy district (near Calcutta) in West Bengal, India (Odend'hal 1988). While the human population increased by 10.1 percent and cattle numbers increased 25 percent (a reversal in the trend of cattle numbers during the preceding ten years), the age and sex ratios of cattle also changed dramatically during this period. The number of working age male cattle decreased almost 50 percent, with increasing reliance on mechanical draft power, while the number of younger female cattle increased substantially. During the same time feeding costs increased threefold. Land-use increasingly changed from traditional self-sufficient agriculture to agriculture based on imported fossil fuels, mechanized draft power, and other sophisticated technologies and external inputs. The increase in human and cattle numbers is directly correlated to the increased primary productivity due largely to multiple cropping as a result of improved irrigation capabilities. The stimulus of local villagers apparently is not so much to have more milk to feed their families but to provide an income source. Excess milk is frequently converted to casein for sale in Calcutta.

India has embarked on the world's most comprehensive cattle improvement program to increase both milk production and draft power (Chakravarti 1987). It contains almost 20 percent of all cattle and 50 percent of the world's water buffalo, and the livestock densities are extremely high, ranging from 10 to 70 cattle and buffalo per hectare of the 4 percent of the cultivated land under pasture and 2 percent under fodder crops. Success of the program is directly related to an adequate supply of feed which is most commonly derived from crop residues, including concentrates, dry fodder, and green fodder. The feed-surplus districts form an irregular belt in western India that extends through the states of Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, Rajathan, Gujurat, and Maharashtra. The deficit in dry and green fodder in districts occurs mostly in northern, eastern, and southern parts of India. Of greatest concern is the high degree of deficiency for all three categories of feed in the densely populated plains of central and eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Bengal as well as in some southern costal districts.

In the Cauca Valley of Colombia intensification of agriculture through mixed farming, including livestock, is proving to be both technically and economically feasible for resource-poor farmers (Preston 1990). The farming system uses high biomass crops for food and feed production and aims to be completely self-sufficient for fuel derived from crop residues and livestock excreta. Cropping systems are based around sugarcane as the main biomass source, and the system is complemented with forage trees and aquatic plants, with pigs, hair sheep, and mules (to be replaced by multipurpose buffaloes) as the principal animals. In this system 215 kg methane is produced per tonne of carcass meat compared to 800 kg methane per tonne of meat from steer production on unsupplemented tropical pastures.

Claims of increased profits from the use of higher stocking rates in conjunction with intensive grazing technology (such as short-duration grazing and Savory-grazing management) were refuted unless concurrent improvement in range, livestock, and business management practices were adopted (Wilson et al, 1987).

2.1.2.4.6 Government Policy

Government policies that affect production incentives are among the most important factors influencing the evolution of livestock production systems. Most governments intervene in some manner in the pricing and marketing of agricultural and livestock production either to subsidize national consumers or to create incentives for export quality produce. Government policy can also affect the stability of livestock production through its impact on the investment climate. This is particularly significant for intensification of production which frequently requires increased investments with deferred returns. Import restrictions, especially nontariff barriers such as quotas or restrictive animal health legislation, also significantly reduce world trade.

At the time of the revolution, the diet of Cuban people depended on the social class they belonged to (Rosset and Benjamin 1994). A goal of the revolution was to guarantee an adequate diet for everyone, but as much as 57 percent of the calories consumed was imported due to concentration on sugar production. For thirty years Cuba was the only country in Latin America to eliminate hunger and achieved more rapid modernization than most developing countries, due to the government's commitment to social equity and very favorable terms of trade for exported sugar and imported fuel with the former Soviet Union. However, since trade relations with the Soviet Union crumbled in 1990, the resulting agricultural crisis reduced nutritional levels, with up to a 30 percent decrease in average daily caloric and protein intake. Beef production has plummeted and red meat and dairy products are scarce. Due to constraints on imports, government priorities have shifted to sustainable agriculture and chicken and beef production, which were largely dependent on imported feeds, and are being replaced with pig production to supply national protein requirements. The emphasis is on an increased degree of local participation in decision making and on agricultural systems adapted to local agroecological conditions. Draft animals are replacing imported tractors in an effort to convert to low-input sustainable system of agricultural production.

The Mexican ejido is an agrarian community that received the usufruct of land under the agrarian reform laws following the 1910 Mexican revolution, but until 1992 they did could not legally or lease the land rights (LaBaume and Dahl 1986). The law states specifically that timber or grazingland must be used collectively. After the revolution, ejidos rapidly displaced privately owned farms and ranches, particularly in northern Mexico where most of the rangeland exists. By the mid-1980s Mexico was socially and politically committed to the ejido system which then covered about 61.8 million acres of mostly degraded rangeland. Productivity per animal and per ha were estimated to be only 40 percent and 56 percent, respectively, of potential productivity from rangeland in excellent condition. In addition, the number of horses and labor exceeds the requirement for efficient rangeland management. As in many agrarian societies, livestock ownership is a source of prestige in the community, and livestock, especially horses and burros are viewed as a storehouse of wealth. Any changes of the organizational structure of the ejido system requires education particularly of the ejido leaders.

In order to be able to receive land after the revolution in Mexico, communities had to have at least twenty households and farmers had to be of Mexican birth (Soberon-Ferrer and Whittington 1993). This land-tenure structure creates a large fertility incentive because children enable a family to retain its land rights and to enhance their probability of controlling more land. This incentive is dampened, however, if ejidos already control most of the farms in the state. Regardless of the extent of land covered by ejidos, a large family also ensures a strong political base in the communally controlled ejido.

According to Machado (1981), in 1922 Chihuahua enacted an agrarian code limiting the amount of land one individual could hold to 100,000 acres. By 1935 the president, though committed to nationwide agrarian reform, attempted to mollify ranchers who were threatened with further reduction in the maximum legal size of individual landholding by agreeing that the maximum size of holding by an individual or corporation could be 100,000 acres. Subsequently, under pressure from ranchers, he issued decrees that an owner could save from expropriation as much land as necessary to run 500 beef or 300 dairy cattle. However, due to the federal obsession with the ejido system as the land tenure of choice, many ranchers slowly incorporated only supplemental feeding because, once improved to cultivate supplemental feeds, land could be labeled as agricultural which made holdings more susceptible to expropriation for ejido use. In 1971 the Federal Land Reform Law exempted from expropriation cattle lands improved through technological innovation and defined the optimal size for a cattle operation as 500 head. Ultimately, the north Mexican cattle industry grew because of a natural dependence between itself and the U.S.

The basis for the deforestation in Amazonia has been closely linked to the expansion of ranching and pasture development in Brazil (Hecht 1993). Such expansion has resulted from massive government subsidies to develop regional cattle breeding herds with both cow-calf and steer-fattening operations. In addition, to the emphasis on fattening steers, the economic impact of regional development strategies (to integrate indigenous groups into the national economy [Hecht 1985]), and subsidized credits, inflationary pressures that place premiums on real estate, the potential revenues from timber and the possibility of gold strikes have dramatically elevated the speculative value of land. Accordingly, an industry has developed around clearing land for pasture and then selling the land as quickly as possible, pocketing the gains and moving on to new forest areas. Areas adjacent to gold strikes have frequently experienced vigorous clearing. In this climate the frequently negative real returns to production of cattle are overshadowed by the spectacular returns from speculative investments in land and the rents associated with the subsidies.

This process has resulted in peasants frequently being displaced by cattle ranchers in violent conflicts, though peasants frequently participate in short-term cropping of land on its way to becoming pasture. Moreover, cattle are a means of reducing risk in agriculture by providing supplemental income through the provision of milk and calves. In addition, beef fetches the highest price per kg of any basic food commodity with less labor input, and cattle can extend the economic life of cleared areas. As these areas become unproductive frequently within ten years, they are abandoned and new areas are cleared. The destiny of the region will be shaped through national politics to a greater extent than international pressure. Under the prevailing government policies and subsidies, the logic behind investing in livestock is very compelling and likely to become more so because forestry agriculture and agroforestry lack the variety of productive, extractive and fiscal mechanisms through which value can be captured.

Environmental degradation associated with pasture development in eastern Amazonia is best understood as a consequence of the role of land in inflationary economies, the traditional function of cattle as a means of acquiring large areas, the stimulating effect of the physical opening of the agricultural sectors of the economy, and the role of large government subsidies in the creation of land markets (Hecht 1985). The expansion of ranching through tax breaks, subsidies and road development generated large untaxed capital gains for certain groups. Acquisition of land was therefore a vehicle for capturing state subsidies. The productivity of land became secondary because the land itself was the commodity.

The Brazilian state of Rondônia is both a major agricultural center and demographic frontier and the site of some of the most rapid deforestation ever witnessed in the humid tropics (Milikan 1992). The World Bank has been held directly responsible for financing a "social and ecological disaster of tremendous dimensions" (Rich 1985). In 1970 the Brazilian government launched a program to integrate the Amazon Basin into the national society. This policy resulted in construction of roads and other infrastructure and the promotion of private livestock and mining enterprises including an unprecedented small-farmer colonization scheme. Completion of the infrastructure together with the subsidies made it clear that huge profits could be made through speculative cattle ranching in the Amazon. By mid-1980, 46 percent of the cleared land in Rondônia was allocated to cattle pasture, 30 percent was under annual crops, and 16 percent was abandoned or fallow and only 8 percent had been planted to perennial crops. Most colonists would convert plots cultivated for one or two years to pasture rather than allow them to revert to secondary vegetation. Moreover, ownership of cattle represents a vital source of reserve capital for colonist households. "The alarming problems of tropical deforestation and land degradation in Rondônia call attention to the need for Brazil's socioeconomic inequalities to be resolved in their places of origin rather than reproduced on the Amazonian frontier" (Rich 1985).

General tax policies, special tax incentives, the rules that govern land allocation, and the agricultural credit system all accelerate deforestation in the Amazon (Biswanger 1991). The key provisions include virtual exemption of agricultural income from income tax, security of land claims is determined by land clearing; land tax encouraging conversion of forest to cropland or pasture, tax credit schemes aimed at corporate livestock ranches established on cleared forest areas, and subsidized credit available for ranches approved by the Superintendency for Amazon Development (SUDAM).

Landsat data indicate that by 1991, 426,000 km² forest was cleared (approximately more than 10 percent of the original 4 million km² forested area of Brazil's Amazon Region) (Fearnside 1993). However, from 1978 to 1991, the rate of removal of the forest halved. Thirty percent of the clearing was attributable to small-scale farmers and the remainder to medium- or large-scale ranchers.

Under Brazilian law, the indigenous people are denied full capacity and may not own land or exercise judicial acts (Williams 1983). The civil code also states that the forest-dwellers remain subject to the established tutelage until they become adapted to the "civilization of the country." Although the Brazilian constitution states that lands inhabited by forest-dwellers are inalienable and that they have the rights to permanent occupation and to the exclusive use of usufruct of the resources on the land, these rights are lost once an individual or community is no longer legally defined as Indian, and the land, no longer inhabited by Indians, is lost. The liberation of Indian land occurs when Indians are considered integrated into the national community. Recent developments in Brazilian Indian policy are principally concerned with the acceleration of dispossession of land from Indians. The State retains control of indigenous land and resources until capitalist enterprise demands them. The law then provides all the conditions necessary for appropriation. Since collective land holding is a non-accumulative economy, it is intolerable to the Brazilian State faced with social problems created through massive urban poverty.

Majd (1987) reports that capitalism in rural Iran had old and well-established roots. Tenants were not bound by custom to land, and the use of wage labor by small farmers and tenants prior to land reform was widespread. However, the implementation of land reform in Iran from 1962 to 1971 transferred the ownership of land to the tenants that cultivated the land and thus a massive redistribution of wealth from landlords to peasants. This and subsequent government policies weakened the institution of private property in rural areas and resulted in greater government involvement in the economic and political life of rural Iran with increasingly large areas of cultivation under government control.

After the initiation of land reform in China, which redistributed 40 percent of China's arable land to peasant families, control over land tenure and agricultural production became increasingly centralized and rigid (Leeming 1989). However, poultry and pigs remained mostly privately owned. The centralization trend was reversed in the early 1970s with new land reforms, which after 1978 were aimed at family farming, with specific parcels of land in the village-owned land being allocated to individual families for cultivation. In many areas, particularly those close to urban centers, this system has improved productivity of crops and livestock, such as pigs.

The extensive loess deposits in north central China, while fertile and easy to work, are also highly susceptible to erosion, being composed of silts, and occur in areas of frequent drought and limited access to large markets (Curran 1987). As a result of the increasingly massive sediment loads in the Huang He and the catastrophic flooding in the North China plain, the Chinese government has proposed to decrease the area of land that is cultivated, to increase pasture land and woodland, and to provide nonagricultural jobs to relieve unemployment. Farm expansion will be encouraged but only to change to pasture. While mixed farming has been very successful in East China, farmers in the loess areas are reluctant to risk their staple grain crops because communications and marketing are difficult. Future improvement of transportation infrastructure to develop industrial and mining activities in these areas might, however, encourage them to change the current practices and increase the livestock components of their farming activities.

Simpson and Li (1995) report that in one of the largest grassland areas of the world in northern China (covering 2.9 million km² or 30 percent of the nation's total area and 85 percent of which are in the temperate zone), grazinglands vary in size from tiny pastures in agricultural areas to vast areas in Inner Mongolia. A substantial portion of cows in grassland areas used for draft (93 percent), milk, and meat, though beef production has been growing at 20 percent per annum since 1978. In the pastoral grazing areas, farmers generally own both cattle and sheep. In these areas it was found that feedlots (currently being proposed as a method for developing this area) are economically viable. However, with the limited transportation and communications systems and management knowledge, potential net income from selling weaned calves is currently greater than for feedlot-fattened cattle. Since increased efficiency will require amalgamation of production areas in some places, continuing land tenure changes will be required that draw people from grassland areas to urban settings.

Sheehy and Conner (1993) indicate that agriculture in Mongolia has been historically based on extensive pastoral livestock production with crop-based agriculture limited to non-Mongolian agriculturalists. Following the transition to the socialist system in the 1920's, collectivization of livestock herding with greater control over animal distribution was an attempt to obtain increased livestock production from the traditional pastoral grazing system. The collective negdel system attempted to maximize livestock offtake from grazingland by subsidizing inputs such as specialized livestock herding techniques, state provision of winter-spring supplementry feed, the development of livestock watering facilities to increase distribution of livestock into previously unused grazingland, and health and education benefits for herders. Under the 1924 Constitution of the Mongolian People's Republic all land became state property, but the collectives had a perpetual right to occupy the land on which they carried out their activities. Despite a certain continuity of customary practices under collectivization, significant changes in pastoral mobility and herding practices have occurred since the 1940s. It was commonly observed through the period of collectivization that animals in private ownership fared better than those in state or collective ownership. Herders have tended to return to a mixed-animal livestock production system to minimize risk in an uncertain production environment. The transition from a subsidized, state-directed, agricultural sector to semiprivatized farm companies has been difficult for state farms and collectives. Difficulties are being encountered in the division of former state farms into optimally sized production units without the benefit of a promulgated land law (still under preparation). In many areas, herders are attempting to reclaim winter shelters and grazing areas held by families prior to collectivization. However, herders appear to be less mobile without the assistance of the collective in moving camp to new pastures. More traditional herder groups, such as the kho til, consisting of the extended family or close friends, are reforming. Herders have tended to return to a mixed-animal livestock production system to minimize risk in an uncertain production environment.

2.1.2.4.7 International Intervention and Trade Effects

Export world-market prices of livestock products have little relation to the true costs of production because almost all industrialized countries provide some form of state subsidies for their livestock producers (Preston 1990). As a result dumping of livestock surpluses on the world market is common, invariably to the disadvantage of third-world farmers who generally do not receive such subsidies. Without subsidies and in terms of basic resources, tropical countries have a potentially high competitive advantage over industrialized countries for livestock production. However, sustainable, intensive mixed-farming systems, in which livestock managed in confinement are used as a nutrient-cycling agent, are in conflict with the interests of traditional graziers.

2.1.2.4.8 Discussion and Conclusion

Biswanger et al.'s (1993) summary of the evolution of rural land use and land tenure is instructive. Central to their discussion is the assumption that prevailing land use patterns are determined by human rent seeking behavior modified by the effects of cultural mores, market imperfections, and external interventions. Where land is abundant and population density low, cooperative land use may be individually more profitable than private land holding. Thus, in areas where rent from agricultural or livestock production is low, communal tenure systems tend to develop.

Economically efficient use of common property resources, such as grazinglands, is dependent on the clear specification and internal enforcement of user (usufruct) rights for well-defined communities coexisting with the resources. On marginal lands people generally concern themselves more with labor efficiency and risk avoidance than with simply maximizing production (Dickie and O'Rourke 1984). Thus, properly organized common-property institutions are mechanisms for coordinating community decisions so that individuals are provided with the assurance that others will not misuse common resources. The last communal rights to survive tend to be grazing or collection rights on communal grazing areas and forests where soils are marginal for cultivation.

When population pressure or market opportunities entice communities to sell land to outsiders, the communal tenure system may change to owner operated family farms under free-hold tenure. In the past, consolidation of initial small land holdings or increasingly fragmented land, due to cultural or religious laws, resulted in the formation of either landlord estates (e.g., Bolivia, China, India, Iran, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan), where owners allocated the usufruct of all land to tenants, or haciendas (mainly in Latin America and Western Europe), where owners cultivated their using workers whom they allowed to grow subsistence groups under usufruct tenancy arrangements. Subsequent land reforms generally led to stable systems of family farm in the case of landlord estates, but hacienda owners resisted change and frequently evicted tenants and transformed their estates into large mechanized commercial farms.

Yet privatization of land used for livestock production does not always result in increased productivity. Land titles must constitute fully alienable collateral in order for their introduction to bring production improvement over communal tenure systems. For example, the new land code and land restructuring in Russia resulted in land redistribution from state ownership to collective ownership by the workers with the right of individuals to exit with a share of land. However, such land cannot be sold freely for ten years, and there has been little change in the agricultural practices mandated while land was under state control (Brooks and Lerman 1993).

Simple reallocation of land to farm workers in formerly rigidly controlled states, such as those of East Europe, is unlikely to result in any changes in productivity (Buckwell and Davidova 1993). Lack of entrepreneurial skills, small land holding, low profitability due to price and trade controls, and political uncertainty create few incentives for landowners to establish family farms. Competitive marketing channels, affordable private credit, reliable machinery and equipment services, and appropriate management skills are all required to create positive incentives that will enhance productivity. In addition, it has been found that, in Russia, continued subsidies, cheap credit, and the lack of effective bankruptcy legislation allowed farms to retain the labor force they had prior to restructuring and thus created no incentives to change agricultural practices (Brooks and Lerman 1993). Once interest rates and grain and energy prices rise and subsidies are reduced, many collective farms will be unable to meet the payrolls of the overloaded labor force. Then, collective enterprises may reorganize as voluntary producers cooperatives based on individual land ownership.

While individual property rights may not be appropriate for certain resources, government legislation to govern the use of resources frequently does not enhance the productive and sustainable use of resources either. For example, equity distortions in private land markets occur where land prices and the capitalized value of the potential income stream from the land differ significantly. This frequently results from government policy interventions aimed at favoring politically better connected segments of society, as exemplified by land use in Brazil and Mexico. Such differences inevitably reduce the probability that voluntary land sales will increase land-use efficiency and equity because efficient producers who purchase land based on its productivity will be excluded from the market. Governments throughout the world, frequently under the direction of international development agencies, nevertheless continue to introduce implicit and explicit distortions favoring larger farms.

It is ironic that the Hobbesian view of man's fate as "war of all against all," so deeply imbedded in a strictly individualistic interpretation of economic choice, should lead property rights advocates, such as Hardin (1968), to conclude that solutions to overgrazing must be imposed from the outside (Runge 1981). Unproductive use or degradation of land resources is not the fault of the property regime per se, but rather due to the breakdown in the incentive mechanisms necessary for the concept of the property to have a meaning.

"Whether resources are de jure privately or state managed, if these property regimes are under-funded, large-scale or managerially distant, the resources fate are de facto determined by the people living with the resources" (Bromley and Cernea 1989). Where central governments are unable to effectively enforce sustainable use of land expropriated from communal owners, previously well-administered resources have often been converted to open-access resources because communities no longer have a vested interest in the resources, but they continue to bear the opportunity cost of their existence. In addition, expropriation has often set governments against peasants when successful resource management requires the opposite (Bromley and Cernea 1989).

Conversely, private property regimes may fail to prevent overexploitation of resources in developing countries because there is frequently no adequate mechanism for preventing misuse by others their resources. Thus, if transparent decision-making mechanisms are available to prevent individual abuse of resources, land administration by the community may provide comparable security, allocation flexibility, and equity advantages to enforced private land holding.

In conclusion, the most appropriate form of land tenure and land use for livestock in a given situation is entirely dependent on the productivity of the land relative to human population pressure, the comparative advantage of livestock to other potential products form the land, and the prevailing cultural or religious values of the people associated with the land.

2.1.2.5 Socioeconomic Indicators about Population

2.1.2.5.1 Urban Versus Rural Development

Urban areas had 29 percent of the world's population in 1950, compared with only 3 percent in the mid-1700s. By 1985 about 41 percent of the population lived in urban areas. It is estimated by the United Nations that by 2025 sixty percent of the world's population will live in or around cities. Almost all of this growth will be in developing countries, which had about 17 percent of their population in urban areas in 1950 and 34 percent in 1970. It is expected that 57 percent of LDC population will be urban by the year 2025.

There is considerable difference between continents in the percent of urban population. For example, while Asia had about 30 percent of their population in urban areas in 1990, Latin America was 72 percent urbanized - nearly equal to the developed world. It is expected that Latin America will be 85 percent urban in 2025, i.e., higher than projections for the developed world.

A major goal of international agricultural research and related activities has been contributing to increasing sustainable food production in developing countries in such a way that the nutritional level and general well-being of low-income people are improved. The results of the analysis on urbanization indicates that an overwhelming number of people in the developing countries will be classified as urbanites. Clearly, a major portion of them will be classified as poor, leading to the conclusion that the target clientele of agricultural research is shifting rapidly from poor-subsistence agriculturalists to urban consumers. Thus, even though the challenge of supporting the rural poor continues to be a formidable one, the upcoming challenge is how to feed a massive urban group. This is especially critical given desires to achieve self-reliance in the developing world. In simple terms it means that on average each agricultural and livestock-oriented family will have to feed not only themselves, and a few other people, but themselves and numerous other people.

The analysis of urbanization leads to the thorny question of equity. When there was a relatively small population it was possible to place emphasis on land distribution and making attempts to accommodate a substantial portion of the people who wanted to remain on the land and simply subsist. But due to the inexorable growth of population, it may be that the notion of equity will shift to place more emphasis on duty in some nations and individuals to simply produce to feed others. This notion is expanded in light of questions about sustainability of production systems and the planet in general.

Agricultural and livestock planners have a mandate to help reduce poverty and assure an adequate supply of food. Supply response is demand driven. Crop and livestock producers are almost entirely driven by the profit motive, provided they are part of a market economy. But despite a great deal of discussion by economic development specialists concerning the emphasis to be placed on agriculture in the economic development process, the fact remains that agriculture is a service industry in the sense that it exists to meet the needs of people. Agriculture makes a major contribution to development if policies are set forth that encourage greater efficiency, as that leads to reduced production cost, and ultimately reduced prices to consumers, which in turn leads to a greater proportion of a household's expenditure being spent on other goods and services or set aside in savings. But because agriculture has a relatively low multiplier effect, especially at low levels of productivity, agriculture, and livestock in particular, cannot lead economic development. Consequently, nonagricultural efforts to promote per capita income growth are the key element in a poverty and food security strategy. Accordingly, the primary focus should be facilitation of productive employment in urban rather than rural areas.

An analysis of the relation between per capita income and percentage of the population in urban areas indicates that urban population generally must be greater than 50 percent of total population before the country reaches the middle-income range, i.e., around U.S. $1,500 (Table V.3). After that level is reached, small increases in per capita income lead to relatively high increases in per capita income.

Table V.3 Relation between per capita income and urbanization, 1988

Country or type of economy	Per capita income - $US -	Urban population as a percent of total population - Percent -
Low income, average	320	35
China	330	50
India	340	27
Other	280	25
Middle income, average	1930	58
Lower-middle income	1380	56
Upper-middle income	3240	62
High income	17080	78

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators, 1990.

2.1.2.6 Microeconomics

See Section III-2.1.2.6.

2.2.0 Forest Utilization

2.2.1.0. Direct Indictors

2.2.1.1. Soil Erosion

Ross et al. (1990) reviewed the impact of forest clearing on soil hydrology and erosion for tropical forest, indicating that removal of forest cover in virtually all environmens leads to instability in the soil cover, changes in the hydrological regime, soil erosion, and loss of productivity. However, there are few landscape level studies in tropical forests describing the resulting alteration on water yield, organic matter, and nutrient redistribution following disturbance and recovery (Anderson and Spencer 1989). Lal (1981) highlighted the multiple role of leaf litter at the soil surface on mediating soil loss from rainforest ecosystems, dissipating the energy of raindrop or throughfall impact, and increasing infiltration capacity. Leaf litter is the primary input source for nutrients in the soil as well as leachates from foliage throughfall.

2.2.1.2. Carbon Dioxide Balance

2.2.1.3. Vegetation Ground Cover

Clearance of forest itself is an enormously varied process taking place in a wide range of topographic, edaphic, and hydrological conditions at different rates. Interjection of livestock grazing in the process places additional impacts on soil characteristics, vegetation compostion/structure, surface features, and nutrient cycling.

The interaction between tree overstory and soil litter cover interacts to regulate the rate of removal of soil and nutrients. Transporting capacity of nutrients is driven by rainsplash, overland flow, or saturated interflow. Rainsplash is mediated by the foliage and litter (Ross et al. 1990). The amount and energy of falling rain depends on canopy characteristics, such as size and spatial arrangement of leaves, and canopy density. Interception by trees and by epiphytes and lianes has been documented to be highly variable. Nigerian rainforest intercepts 3 percent of rainfall, while 20 percent is intercepted in warm tropical forests in Colombia and 63 percent in Thailand teak forest (Raich 1983, Vis 1986, Troendle 1985) . Nortcliff and Thornes (1981) noted that 12 percent of rainfall was intercepted in a central Amazonian terra firme forest, while 9 percent was intercepted in a nearby rainforest (Lloyd and Margues Filho 1988).

Raungpanit (1985) found canopy cover highly correlated to runoff and soil erosion in evergreen forests of Thailand. Ross et al. (1990) indicated that a steep exponential decay in runoff and erosion occurs; as the relative cover exceeds 30 percent, erosion diminishes to small values over a wide array of studies.

The characteristics of tree canopies influence the size and shape of drops while canopy height affects drip fall velocity. Amount of material splashed by throughfall below tree canopies, compared to rainfall, increased by up to 600 percent (Brandt 1988), while understory litter and herbaceous vegetation reduces splash erosion (Wiersum 1985). Leaf litter in forested environments appears to be the most critical component mediating potential soil loss (Brandt 1988).

Inflitration rates in undisturbed rainforest soils are high, reflecting good soil structure, a surface litter layer with a dense mat of fine roots and a large microorganism population which maintains high macroporosity at the soil surface (Anderson 1988). Litter in high rainfall, high turnover forest systems is generally comprised of two layers (Nortcliff and Thornes 1981). The upper layer is easily removed by hand-picking or scraping, while the lower layer is dense, with well decomposed foliage and interwoven with the root mat, both mechanically and biologically. Thickness and completeness of the litter and humus layer interacts with rainfall intensity, which affects sediment yield. Forest-clearing operations cause soil compaction as well as the removal of the surface litter layer and distruction of the root mat. Rainsplash and the breakdown of soil organic matter after forest clearing causes disaggregation of surface soil material, blockage of macropores, reduced infiltration capacity, and the facilitation of particle detachment and erodibility if cover crops or grasses are not rapidly established on the site (Ross et al. 1990).

Once tropical forests are cleared, the land is either cropped for one year and replanted to derived pasture species, e.g., Panicum maximum, Hyparrhenia rufa, Brachiaria sp., cropped for several years until soil nutrients are inadequate and left to return to native grasses and invaded by woody species, not cropped and grazing introduced on the native grasses, not cropped and planted to derived pasture species. In all cases the resulting pastureland (native or derived) may or may not be fertilized and may or may not receive follow-up woody plant and dicot control. Many socioeconomic forces drive the decision process for initial clearing and subsequent cropping and/or pasture systems Unfortunately, many of the pasture species that are introduced into cleared tropical forest systems are not readily sustained in high productive condition (Eden et al. 1990).

Eden et al. (1990) provided a general overview of pasture development on cleared forest land in northern Amazonia. They found that initial forest clearing and burning followed by short-term crop cultivation and conversion to pasture based on introduced grasses is initially productive for cattle grazing; pasture condition deteriorates over time as woody weed invasion increases. However, they found pasture condition of swards (twenty-five years) to be variable, apparently as a function of history of grazing intensity and related management practices. Total plant content of nutrients in older established pastures was not directly reflected in soil-nutrient levels. They found local soils to be inherently acid in character, but they were not excessively degraded by pasture development. However, available phosphorus was the principal limiting nutrient as in many other pastures in tropical central South America. It was their judgement that pioneer ranching practiced in the region was inappropriate on Amazonian forest land and not sustainable, but they also felt that in certain conditions sustainable livestock rearing might eventually be developed.

Creation of pastures following clearing of tropical forests has the effect of stabilizing soil surface conditions and reinstating localized nutrient cycling. Most of the species that occupy these sites form high basal area, and many herbs are leguminous. Serrao and Toledo (1988) indicated that pasture performance is high for 3 to 5 years and then declines with increasing weed invasion. However, this productivity can be sustained by follow- up woody weed maintenance treatments and occasional phosphorus inputs. As grazing pressure increases and livestock are rotated less between pastures, weed invasion is accelerated. The lower the fertility of the pasture, the greater the invasion rate of weeds (Fearnside 1979). Therefore, grazing pressure and soil fertility interact with management inputs to control woody weed and tree invasion to affect the long-term stability of derived pastures and native pastures created after forest clearing. Eden et al. (1990) found that approximately 40 percent of common woody weeds in Panicum maximum pastures are in the Leguminosae family. Fire is the most common control mechanism for suppressing woody tree invasion. Surprisingly, few goats are used in these situations with some grazing of Barbado sheep in Central America. Barbado sheep have not been observed to be effective in suppressing woody weed invasion in derived pastures. Recent government regulations suppressing use of fire is exaporating the situation by increasing woody weed invasion rates, placing pressure on managers to increase stocking rates for improved forage quality, and increasing incidence of ticks and tick-borne diseases.

Many authors referred to pasture productivity as low, when one cow could be sustained on 2 ha yearlong in undeveloped native pasture created from cleared forests. On a global basis this is quite high when compared to the dry tropics, wet/dry savannas, and temperature grasslands of the world. Sustained levels of 1 hectare for each mature producing cow are not uncommon on moderately well-managed pastures in the tropical lowlands of southern Mexico, Central America, and northern South America (Tergas 1992).

Adverse soil conditions constrain pasture production. Initial forest clearance and burning enhance the supply of available soil nutrients, although losses occur as a result of leaching and erosion immediately following clearance. Serrao (1978) noted that available calcium and magnesium levels in the soil remained relatively high in pasture soils and pH stayed in the range of 5.5 to 6.5, while exchangeable aluminum generally remained low. However, phosphorus was excessively low, particularly on clayey soils. Hecht (1981) noted topsoil compaction resulting from high stock densities on clayey soils adversely affecting infiltration rates and sheet erosion tropical-derived pastures.

2.3 Crop-Livestock Interactions

2.3.1 Direct Indicators

2.3.1.1 Soil Fertility

2.3.1.2. Soil Structure

Although soils in Latin American savannas are generally considered to have excellent physical properties, they are susceptible to compaction and degration from intensive use of machinery and fertilizers (Vera et al. 1992). Mechanical resistance and bulk density of the soil was lower in areas previously growing Brachiaria decumbens/Pueraria phaseoloides pasture, with a better spread of soil aggregate sizes in soil. Only a fraction of organic matter in residues of pastures is mineralized, usually about 40 percent over 1 to 5 years. The remainder enters more stable pools which mineralize very slowly. Cultivation accelerates the process. Pastures accumulate organic and N pools, thereby improving the fertility of the soil for later cropping.

2.3.1.4. Vegetative Ground Cover

The greatest impact of crop-livestock interactions is the displacement of livestock grazing from more productive rangelands to marginal lands due to land conversion. If livestock numbers are not adjusted downward or crop residue systems not established, ecological stability is at risk on associated marginal lands. Loss of vegetative and soil surface cover leads to reduced infiltration and increased soil erosion. Expansion of cropping in the savannas of South America has placed greater pressure on lower producing, steeper grazinglands (Vera et al. 1992)

2.3.2 Indirect Indicators

2.3.2.1 Socioeconomic Indicators about Agriculture

2.3.2.1.1 Animal Versus Mechanical Power

One of the more difficult problems connected with animals for draft and transport is to set forth recommendations about the substitution of mechanical power in place of animals. The issue is especially complex because of the variety of factors involved. Some families may not want to shift from animals to mechanical power simply due to the importance of using animals as a store of wealth. Other families may not have the cash or economic wherewithal to make the transition even if they determine it to be in their interest. An example is a farmer who picks up milk from several neighbors and delivers it to a collection point using a cart drawn by oxen. Suppose that person could expand the service by shifting to a small tractor and wagon. An indirect benefit might be gaining sufficient time to permit another activity, such as custom ploughing, to be initiated. But credit may be a constraint that cannot be overcome.

Risk is another often overlooked aspect when dealing with draft animals. Farmers in many irrigated areas of Asia, such as Thailand for instance, are rapidly adopting tractors as there is very little risk of a crop failure when irrigation is used that might prevent payments from being made on purchased equipment. Also, the fixed cost of the machinery can probably be spread over two crops rather than one in the rainfed areas. In contrast, draft animals are usually perceived to be a free good, having been raised on the farm. Also, animals are virtually never purchased with time payments, while credit is a ubiquitous feature of machinery purchase. Another dimension is that the closer one comes to a large municipal area, the more chance there is of finding tractors because the value of land is higher, and this must be used on a more commercial basis. Furthermore, mechanics and spare parts are usually more readily available in irrigated as opposed to more remote areas. The concepts discussed are especially important for range- or pasture-based producers. The more removed they are from markets, and the more they are tied to subsistence-oriented production practices, the longer they will rely on animals for draft and transport.

Draft and transport animal research is deceiving, for it appears quite simple, yet is very complex. For example, feed requirements, which are particularly high in the tropics where cattle performance is characterized by poor reproduction, slow growth, and high mortality, are thus much higher than might at first be thought. Apart from feed as a drain on physical resources, labor use is much higher than might be suspected and in many cases may be more labor shifting than labor saving.

The evaluation of animal versus mechanical power is fraught with difficulties, for there are very few purchased inputs employed in conjunction with draft animals. For example, in a pilot project, improved harness may be provided by the state and as a result is a social cost rather than a cash outflow by the animal's owner. In some areas, animal dung is an important source of fuel, and the attachment of a family to the animals themselves versus a cold, hard piece of machinery cannot be overlooked. However, although draft animals are used only for a restricted period of time by most producers, they require feed and care all year, and that can become quite costly.

The People's Republic of China (PRC) provides an example of one country where a rapid shift is taking place from animals to mechanical power in certain areas. Now that cropland has been decollectivized in the majority of China, many producers are finding that small, technologically adaptable tractors meet needs better than draft animals do. Rapid increases in farm income as a result of national price production and marketing policies are permitting farmers to purchase implements that just a few years ago were impossible to even dream about. It appears that the shift to mechanical power in the PRC, as in the rest of the world, now rests on size of holdings, cropping systems, cash and credit availability, formation of cooperative machinery use systems and availability of appropriate machinery.

The major conclusion one may draw after considering both direct and indirect factors related to animal power is that under some circumstances animals will continue to be the best alternative while under other conditions the use of machinery should receive research and extension priority. This is true not only between countries but also within regions and even within a community. In effect, the systems and research are problem specific.

A great deal of work is needed on the nutrition, selection, breeding, health, and other aspects of draft animals and their management. An example of the benefits that can be obtained with relatively little cost is incorporation of improved harness and more appropriate farming implements (Inns 1980). Today, most of the yokes are handmade wooden affairs that are both inefficient and cruel (Ramaswamy 1979). In Thailand work carried out by the Agency for International Development (AID) showed that at least a 25 percent improvement in efficiency could be obtained by using a modified horse collar for buffalo rather than the traditional shoulder yolk, which hurts the shoulder due to small contact area and cuts off the animal's windpipe due to the throat rope. Similar findings have been reported from various other countries. Much work is being done on draft animals by the International Livestock Center for Africa (ILCA) at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. However, while continual development of technologies is important, the inventory of them still far exceeds adoption. In effect, there is a great gap between research and effective extension activities.

Quantitative analyses about interrelationships between work and milk production, and between nutrition and climate are only now beginning to appear (Reh and Horst, 1985). Furthermore, attention is needed on the tradeoff of draft versus losses in other goods and services from animals. For example, if there is only a limited amount of a particular by-product such as bran, it is questionable whether the optimal use is in feeding it to draft animals or to other ones such as a lactating cow or small stock being grown for sale. It may be concluded that testing interventions related to draft animals must be carried out in full recognition of limited farmer resources and in the holistic framework of farming systems. In addition, research should cover one or more complete cropping seasons to reduce errors in measuring animal performance and to better understand interrelationships within households.

2.3.2.2 SOCIO-ECONOMIC INDICATORS ABOUT FEEDS AND FEEDING

See Section IV.2.3.2.2

2.3.2.3 SOCIO-ECONOMIC INDICATORS ABOUT CROPPING SYSTEMS

2.3.2.3.1 Development and Adoption of Technology in Crop Production

Significant increases in crop yield have taken place worldwide in the past several decades thanks to traditional breeding techniques, cultural practices, management improvements and the application of chemicals. Biotechnology opens up a whole new dimension not only for yield increases, but also for new approaches that will permit reduced use of chemicals and ultimately more sustainable agricultural systems. The first part of this section contains an explanation biotechnology. Following that is a discussion about emerging crop technologies. After that are yield prospects in the United States as a means to determine the impact of emerging technologies. The section concludes with the relevance to livestock - environmental interactions.

2.3.2.3.2 Biotechnology: A Further Review

Biotechnology, which is broadly defined as the use of living organisms to alter other organisms, is a set of tools that allows researchers to manipulate genetic material. One of the principal uses for crop production is creation of transgenic plants, i.e. those crops whose hereditary DNA has been augmented by the addition of DNA from a source other than parental germplasm by the use of recombinant DNA techniques. The term recombinant DNA refers to a broad range of techniques involving the manipulation of the genetic material of organisms. Included are technologies by which scientists isolate genes from one organism and insert them in another organism. This term is often used synonymously with genetic engineering.

Genetic modification of plants can be accomplished via three different types of techniques: classical, cellular, and molecular. The classical or traditional plant breeding methods have focused on fertilization of sexually compatible plants, and use of chemicals or radiation to mutate the genetic material. Cellular techniques involve regenerating a whole plant from cultured cells. Molecular techniques, which are most associated with biotechnology, permit transfer of selected genes from any organism into plants of interest. Selected genes are isolated and transferred to a host organism using vectors or direct transfer techniques, such as microinjection, electroporation, or particle guns.

Development of transgenic plants is, of course, a very time consuming and complicated process. Chapter 2 of A New Technological Era for American Agriculture (U.S. Congress, OTA, 1992) contains an excellent review of the tools and techniques of biotechnology, a whole new approach to solve the principal problem faced by crop agriculture, which is to develop a nonchemical means to control plant pests including weeds, insects, and diseases. The direction being taken is development of transgenic crops. It would be most useful if transgenic crops were developed to grow well under less than ideal soil and climatic conditions such as in saline soils and areas with drought problems. Another use of transgenic crops is to improve the quality characteristics of crops, such as changing the oil composition of oilseed crops, and the starch content of potatoes. Although transgenic crops were first produced only in 1983, at least twenty-five transgenic crops have been created, at least in experimental conditions, including cotton, rice, sunflower, soybean, rapeseed, maize, wheat, and alfalfa. Transgenic barley is expected by the mid-1990s. Although a great deal of effort will be required to improve transgenic techniques and to develop new and improved crops, there do not appear to be insurmountable obstacles.

2.3.2.3.3 Biological Control

Biological control methods for pest control and management of weeds have a long history in some countries, such as China as well as the West. For example, these methods have been used in the United States for at least one hundred years. Development of genetic engineering techniques has opened up a whole new avenue for use of the biological control method for agricultural production enhancement.

Biological control of pests means the use of living natural enemies to reduce pest populations. There are three types of organisms involved: parasitic, whose development takes place in or on a single host organism; predators that consume other organisms as a food source; and pathogenic organisms that cause disease in other organisms. Insects and other arthropods like spiders and mites, bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes are being used to manage weeds, insect populations, other arthropod pests, and many disease organisms.

There are three types of approaches in biological control: classical, augmentation, and conservation. The classical approach is to identify natural enemies of the agricultural commodity and then to introduce them into the new environment as a permanent control mechanism. The augmentation approach focuses on increasing the existing population of indigenous pest enemies. The problem is that regular application is generally required because the control agents do not survive between crop seasons or do not survive in sufficient numbers. Finally, conservation practices such as altering cropping patterns and farm management practices can be used to manipulate the environment. The classical approach has been, and will continue to be, the major biological control approach. There has been only limited success in using the biological control approach against pests in grain and row crops.

2.3.2.3.3.1 Pest Control

Traditional breeding programs have resulted in resistance to or tolerance of key pests in many major crops. These classical programs will continue to be important, but biotechnology offers one additional feature - the possibility of selectively engineering plants for insect resistance. Technology scenarios have been developed by the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) to project when crop technologies such as pest control will be commercially introduced.

Using pathogens for insect control is based on the use of DNA microbial insecticides and involves production of transgenic plants producing Bt insecticide. Insects feeding on plants contaminated with the Bt bacteria ingest the crystals and die. The most likely scenario for the several crops which have been developed is that this technology will be introduced commercially by 1995. Other possibilities for pest control are the use of parasites and/or predators as well as genetic modification for resistance to insects using bacteria, viruses and plants. Parasites and predators are not likely to be commercially adopted until early in the 21st century.

2.3.2.3.3.2 Weed Control

Weeds have traditionally been controlled by hand removal techniques such as hoeing, or using animal or tractor drawn cultivators. These techniques are still employed widely in China although during the past decade there has been widespread adoption of herbicides. But, in China, as well as other parts of the world, great concern is expressed over the adverse ecological effects of chemicals, as well as expense. Another problem has been specificity as manifested by different responses of plant species to herbicides depending on the sensitivity of plant enzymes to the herbicide, or the ability of the plant metabolically to inactivate the herbicide. Herbicide tolerant crops, i.e. those that can grow in the presence of herbicides that destroy or harm nontolerant plants, have been successfully developed by traditional plant breeding methods. But, these methods are constrained by the lack of naturally occurring herbicide tolerant genes in crops. Thus, considerable attention has been given to genetic engineering techniques by transferring herbicide resistant genes to crop species in an effort to develop crops which are tolerant to a specific herbicide.

Herbicide tolerance will likely become commercially introduced by the mid 1990s. Biocontrol for weeds using microbial pathogens, insects and other arthropods will likely become introduced commercially by the turn of the century. The complexity of relationships between insects and weeds combined with frequent specificity of one insect to one weed slow the development process.

2.3.2.3.3.3 Disease Control

Plants possess the ability to resist the invasion of pathogenic organisms. This ability involves a complex interaction of genes in both the plant and the pathogen. Although efforts have been made to clone and characterize pathogen and plant genes involved with resistance, a great deal of research is still needed to develop and prepare them for commercial application. Consequently, there is little likelihood of plants resistant to bacteria and fungi being available before the year 2000. But greater success has been achieved in plants resistant to viruses. Dicotyledonous genetically engineered plants are expected to be available commercially by the mid 1990s although monocotyledonous plants are not expected until the turn of the century or early in the century.

2.3.2.3.3.4 Plant Stress

Fluctuations and extremes in temperature and water availability are major constraints to enhanced yields and production stability. Many production techniques have been developed over the years to combat these problems, especially for higher valued crops. For instance, plastic coverings are used on plant beds in production of many vegetable crops. As an example, use of plastic for greenhouse production of vegetable crops in the winter has exploded in the northern areas of China where transportation limitations preclude efficient movement of vegetables from the South. Classical plant-breeding techniques to overcome plant stress have led to yield enhancement and stability in many countries over the past few decades. Considerable advances have been made in saline-tolerant crops, but major breakthroughs are yet to be made.

2.3.2.3.4 Information Technology

Farm-level management can be as much a constraint to animal productivity and crop yield enhancement as inputs, climate, and industry structural changes. As production techniques become more sophisticated, the amount of knowledge and its effective use increases. For example, failure properly to apply fertilizer, insecticides and herbicides can have a devastating effect on production. As biological control agents are developed and increasingly incorporated into farming practices there will be a growing need for information, record keeping, and improved management decision making.

Part of technology adoption and its effective use involves information collection and delivery by university researchers, agricultural extension personnel, government statistical bureaus, and company personnel involved with product development and dissemination as well as training the individual farmer. It is incorrect to assume that many countries are not ready for advanced information technologies just because current livestock and crop production functions are carried out largely by individuals with relatively low levels of education. Rather, attention must be given to the vast network of state farms, county production organizations, and, as alluded to earlier, the wide-ranging support mechanisms in place at the village level. In some cases these institutions have developed to a high level of sophistication to the extent that effective information technologies rather than people are a constraint to further advancement (Cheng and Simpson 1989).

The discussion in this section, while apparently esoteric, is in reality simply a compendium of technological advances which will be adopted in many countries over the next thirty-five years. Many are already being instituted; thus, the analysis is more a problem of when and how much rather than whether the technologies will be adopted.

One major application of computers in agriculture in both the developed and developing countries will be use of expert systems (ones that mimic the reasoning process of a human expert) to diagnose diseases and to evaluate animal and crop performance. A gigantic leap will take place in the use of computers for accounting and record keeping; however, there will be only slow adoption in the use of computers for record analysis. The greater adoption of market-oriented systems will provide the stimulus for the use of computers in animal-feed processing and quality control of feedstuff inputs, and thus agribusiness personnel will probably be one primary user of expert systems. It is tempting to speculate on the integration of expert systems for multiple decision making. But, these systems will probably be used to consider only one aspect of a problem, such as use of a chemical. However, this is not a drawback to their use as one key component is simplicity in use to promote adoption.

Sensors for problems like the evaluation of plant's need for water will probably not be used by researchers in the United States until after 2000, as a key requirement for adoption is effective use of the data that means familiarity with expert systems to interpret data and devise appropriate management strategies for input application.

One major growth area that will facilitate technology adoption and use is called the full-text retrieval system, a human-computer interface by which users can search a collection of documents for relevant information. The principal hardware being developed is use of a CD-ROM. In this way managers of large farms, extension personnel, researchers and agribusiness personnel can quickly and easily access information that will assist in problem diagnosis and solution.

2.3.2.3.5 Yield Potential and Losses

The United States government released a publication in 1992 which is useful in projecting what might take place in many countries. The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) estimated that on average, based on genetic potential, major crop production only achieves about 22 percent of the yield theoretically possible under ideal conditions (U.S. Congress, OTA, 1992). Approximately 69 percent of the loss is due to unfavorable climate, poor soils, and inappropriate farm management practices. Weeds alone result in an annual average loss in the potential yield of major crops equivalent to 2.6 percent annually. Management practices decrease yield by another 2.6 percent and poor soils 4.1 percent. Diseases in fruit result in annual average losses of 17 percent in potential yield, in vegetables of 13 percent, grains 11 percent, and oilseeds 13 percent.

2.3.2.3.5.1 Crop Yield Increases in the United States

Evaluation of the emerging technologies discussed, as well as other management practices and input-related considerations, has led OTA to estimate that in the most likely technology scenario, maize yield in the U.S. will increase 1.01 percent annually during the decade of the 1990s. Cotton yield in the U.S. is projected to increase 1.67 percent annually between 1990 and 2000. Soybean yield, however, is only expected to increase a modest 0.39 percent annually during the 1990s. Wheat yield in the U.S. is expected to increase dramatically during the 1990s, from 2,340 kg per ha in 1990, to 2,865 kg in 2000, an increase of 2.04 percent annually, representing a 55 percent increase in just 10 years.

2.3.2.3.6 Implications for Livestock-Environmental Interaction

Evaluation of the crop yield projections for the U.S., combined with currently available and emerging technologies, including biotechnology, classical breeding and agronomic research techniques, and use of knowledge enhancement approaches, provide evidence that with adequate management and use of inputs the world can expect dramatically expanded yields for many years to come. This increased productivity in crop agriculture is not likely to have dramatic impacts on livestock production. The productivity increases should insure a continued availability of relatively inexpensive food for the rapidly expanding human population, and feedstuff for livestock. This should prepetuate the trend toward more intensive animal-production systems and perhaps encourage integration of confined feeding with traditional grazing-based systems in countries such as China. With additional reliance on confined feeding comes additional problems with assimilating the animal wastes back into the environment. Dramatic breakthroughs in drought and/or salt tolerance could result in additional land being cropped, thus decreasing forage available to grazing animals.