Productividad y autonomía en sistemas de producción ovina: Dos propiedades emergentes de los agroecosistemas

the low meat production per animal and the excessive dependence on inputs such as: manpower and feed, as well as high production cost in sheep production systems and the lack of knowledge on the degree of dependence on them, limit competitiveness in the sheep industry. the object of this study was to carry out a productivity and autonomy analysis of two sheep production systems in the state of veracruz, mexico, under agroecosystems approach. during 2004 these two emergent proprieties of agroecosystems were analyzed in two ovine farms located in the central zone of the state of veracruz. productivity was evaluated according to biological efficiency, taking into consideration annual meat production per ha (pc /ha/year) and global feed conversion (ca). autonomy was evaluated by labour autonomy (al), feeding autonomy (aa) and economic autonomy (ae), taking into consideration employed manpower, foods produced in the system and total utilized foods converted to monetary value; total proportion of inputs produced in the farm and total amount of utilized inputs transformed to monetary value. techniques of semi-structured interviews were applied. for farm "a", pc /ha/year was 917.8kg and 32.8kg/ewe/year and ca was 0.01. al, aa and ae were 0; 40 and 18.5% respectively. for farm "b", pc /ha/year was 380.9kg and 57.2 kg/ewe/year and ca was 0.01. al, aa and ae were 42.4; 71.1 and 52.3% respectively.