Competitiveness of extensive beef cattle farms located in the dehesa ecosystem (SW Europe).

Summary

Beef pasture-based systems of Europe, especially those located in disfavored areas, play a key role in the maintenance of the ecosystems and rural population. However, they suffer from low competitiveness. In this sense, the design of improvement measures is needed. Due to this, this work has two objectives: (1) to assess the competitiveness of the beef pasture-based systems of the Spanish rangelands ('dehesas'); (2) to design improvement measures. For this purpose, a Competitiveness Index (CI) was created on the basis of technical and economic indicators. According to this index, farms were classified in three groups (1 = highly competitive but very dependent on subsidies; 2 = medium level of competitiveness; 3 = low competitiveness but low dependence on subsidies). Group 1 showed the highest scores for the CI (61.46%), mainly due to their lower external dependence on feedstuff, their lower production costs, their larger amount of fattened calves sold per cow, and their high profitability rate. Group 2 had intermediate scores for the majority of indicators, as well as for the CI (49.20%). However, Group 3 showed very low results for the economic indicators, they also showed the lowest dependence on subsidies, and the lowest scores for the CI (34.40%). In general terms, the profitability rate, fattened calves sold por cow, and the dependence on subsidies are the issues on which farms' competitiveness mainly rely. In this sense, the increase of the self-sufficiency, the implementation of a fattening period, and the establishment of contracts with the next link of the agri-value chain must be encouraged in the farms analyzed.