The Ranching for Sustainability Club: Grass Roots Change for Dairy Production in Chiapas, Mexico

Conventional ranching in Chiapas, Mexico includes a yearly pasture burn and agrochemical use that decreases the biodiversity and forest cover of ranch lands. Ranchers, self-described members of a “club” in the Fraylesca region of Chiapas, Mexico, have bucked convention and eliminated burns and agrochemicals from their systems after decades of use because they believed that the land and their production process were growing unhealthy. For this study 25 ranchers were interviewed about their production of dairy cattle, which included seven of these novel silvopostoral systems (holistic) ranches, and 18 conventional ranches. An Emergy Evaluation was conducted to compare the resource use, productivity and sustainability of the conventional and holistic ranches. Conversion to holistic ranching was found to double the Emergy Sustainability Index, increase the Emergy Yield Index, while reducing the Environmental Loading Ratio. Improved emergy sustainability did not decrease milk productivity. Transformities ranged from 0.3 E6 to 12 E6 sej/J of milk in conventional systems and from 0.4 E6 to 1.3 E6 sej/J of milk in holistic systems. Government assistance programs were found to produce a negative impact on ESI. To solve this problem, assistance programs could be re-targeted toward incentive programs for increased forest cover in ranching systems and decreased pasture plowing. The results from this study show that outputs can be maintained as the sustainability of rural dairy ranchers is increased. They also show that positive change can come from the people who work the land, who may recognize what is meant by emergy sustainability in local terms.