Gender, Livestock and Household Peasant Production: Dairy and Diversification in Crop-Livestock Systems of an Andean Community

INTRODUCTION

As rural households around the world are affected by economic development and market integration, their lives change in a variety of ways. New technologies, new products, and new marketing outlets all combine to create an evolving economic environment for the family. In many cases, families respond to this new environment by adding new economic activities and by changing their approaches to traditional activities. In this process, there are often shifts in family members' economic roles and activities. See McCorkle (1993) for a discussion of biosocial groups and their association to activity domains (resource management, production, transformation, distribution, consumption) and roles (resource access, techno-ecological expertise, task implementation, task supervision, decision-making).

The community of San José Llanga (SJL) in the Bolivian altiplano provides an illustration of this process. There are approximately 100 families in this agropastoral community, most of whom combine sheep herding with crops in an integrated peasant Peasant as defined by F. Ellis (1993, p.9): "Peasants are households which derive their livelihoods mainly from agriculture, utilize mainly family labor in farm production, and are characterized by partial engagement in input and output markets which are often imperfect or incomplete." Households in these production systems have to simultaneously decide on production and consumption when allocating resources (Low, 1986). production system. Within this type of crop livestock system, women have been closely associated with sheep herding and the sales of sheep while, to a lesser extent, men have been associated with crop production (Martínez and Barrera, 1989; Caro, 1992; Norman, 1992). In other words, production, distribution, and consumption activities within this system have been shaped by a gender division of roles in technical expertise, decision making, task implementation and supervision, as in other crop-livestock systems.

In 1989, households in SJL were given access to a government-sponsored, subsidized milk marketing program, Fomento Lechero Support for this program comes from the World Food Program. Fomento Lechero is an autonomous entity within CORDEPAZ, a public development corporation for the Department of La Paz. (FL). Dairy production under FL program represents a new "cash crop" in the sense that it can be used to generate monthly sums of cash from family-based agricultural production activities. This study of dairy expansion is relevant and central to the current research efforts of the Small Ruminant Collaborative Research Support Program (SR-CRSP) in the Bolivian altiplano. The agropastoral component is concentrating its research on developing technologies appropriate to fragile environments. The research must take risk into account, and the role that off-farm income plays in sustaining the system is also a priority. The information provided here about income (both farm and off-farm) peasant household enterprise mix, and adoption of dairy activities is essential to answer these questions about the role of economic activities necessary for developing technology. An understanding of these factors is central to devising effective technologies for use in communities like SJL and displacement of production factors otherwise used for small ruminants.

The purpose of this report is to describe how income is generated within the agropastoral system of SJL and to explore the gender-related roles in agricultural production and distribution activities. In addition, the report provides an initial analysis of the implications of increasing dairy production on family labor allocation, productive investment, sources of household income, and the control over that income. Current levels of cash and in-kind income by enterprise are stratified by levels of participation in dairy sales in order to analyze the economic characteristics of families who adopt this enterprise. Comparisons are made between adopters and non adopters of dairying activities. Data for this study came from five case studies and a formal questionnaire applied to a randomly selected sample of 45 households. The research, begun in January 1993, is ongoing.

Working Hypotheses

a. Since SJL is an agropastoral community in a semi-arid region facing risk, the strategies for survival are based on market integration and diversification, which is reflected in a large mix of economic enterprises within the household economy. Viable economic units in this community present a combination of enterprises that is greater than those that are not economically viable.

b. Substitution or complementarity: the introduction of dairy as an economic activity that generates cash has allowed substitution for other cash-generating enterprises within this peasant household economy. This means that there will be differences in the composition of productive enterprises between dairy and non-dairy producers. A competition for forage resources will mean smaller flocks of sheep in those that adopt vs. those that do not adopt. Forage production activity in each group, composition of improved vs. criollo sheep, and the cattle herd by improved and criollo should differ between groups.

c. Access to dairy animals is possible by the sale of small ruminants. It is the presence of sheep that allows the introduction of dairy as a viable economic activity. Expenditure patterns by male and female heads of household are distinct.

d. Market integration: dairy vs. other forms of market integration are substitute activities in a given household economy for securing household survival. Distance to markets and processing of products play a role in defining enterprise composition.

Results presented are addressed using adoption of dairy production as a means for evaluating overall production conditions and income generation in an agropastoral setting where small ruminants are important. Finally, since the agropastoral component of the SR-CRSP has been working in the community of San José Llanga since 1992, this study hopes to make a direct contribution to the research team's knowledge about resource allocation and income generation among the families in the community, and be a baseline for further analysis of changes in this community.

A brief literature review that addresses the Intra household dimension in economics, and risk is included in the first part. We consider this necessary because gender is a relevant research variable in crop-livestock systems (Mc Corckle, 1993, Fernandez, 1989; Martínez and Barrera, 1989). A second section contains a description of methods and provides an overview of agriculture in SJL. The next section presents the findings from the case studies and survey, and analyzes the implications of milk adoption, market integration, and differences in strategies to reproduce the production system. Conclusions and plans for future research are discussed in the last section.

SR-CRSP University of Missouri http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/ssu/srcrsp 961008