Zootechnical and economic performance indexes of milk production systems with different technological levels

Abstract

The objective of this study was to estimate reference zootechnical and economic performance indexes, examine the influence of different technological levels on technical and economic results on dairy farms and identify the components that had higher representativeness on total and effective operational cost. Thirty-eight size, zootechnical and economic indicators of 61 milk production systems, grouped according to three technological levels, were analyzed. The data were collected during January 2002 to December 2011 period. It was adopted the structure of the operating cost and the total cost as methodology for calculating the costs. The results were compared by ANOVA test (normal distribution), complemented by LSD test, and Kruskal-Wallis test (non-normal distribution), also complemented by LSD test. The stratification of milk production systems according to technological level does not seem to be a good criterion to be used when it wants to make comparisons between different groups of producers, evidenced by the lack of statistical significance (P>0.05) in comparing of size and zootechnical indexes between low and medium technological level groups. Producers of high technological level made investments without proper analysis of return on investment and risk. The items of total and effective operational cost that had higher representativeness were, in descending order, feeding and labor.