Agropastoral Production Systems, Intra-household Resource Allocation and Household Member's Domains

IV. FIVE FAMILIES IN SAN JOSÉ LLANGA (continued)

Case Study Four

This family is unique because the husband owns a small business that collects and delivers milk from neighboring communities of San José Llanga. He owns a truck and works with the PIL office in Patacamaya. His work requires him to be away from his home for most of the day; therefore, the wife and children take on most of the agricultural chores.

1. Demographics

This large, young family lives in the zone of Barrio in the main plaza square. The couple has six children under the age of thirteen and they also live with the husband's mother. All children, except the two youngest, assist with the agricultural and household chores. As table 1-1 indicates, all family members, except the two youngest, have been, or are currently, attending school and all of the family members live together in San José Llanga.

Both the husband and wife are classified as originarios, as they both were born in San José Llanga. They inherited land from both sides of the family in a total of four zones: Savilani, Calunimaya, Tolathia, and Barrio. The couple has relatives living in the village.

The main income source for this family comes from the husband who works for the PIL on a regular basis. He owns a truck and collects milk from neighboring communities every morning and then delivers it to Patacamaya for transport to La Paz. At other times, when the family is in need of cash, they will sell live animals, milk (cow), sheep wool, and sheep manure. There were no other forms of supplemental cash income for this past year.

2. Land Resources and Crops Produced

The family has approximately forty-seven hectares of land divided among crops, fallow, and native rangeland (table 4-2). They rent a very small amount of land from other community members for potato production. They paid forty bolivianos ($10) for that land last year. All management decisions in crop production are made jointly between the couple.

The crops shown in table 4-3 were produced during the last year and can be used in four ways: human consumption, animal consumption, sale, and seed. The crops consumed by the family include potatoes, quinoa, beans, and some wheat while those consumed by the animals include alfalfa, forage oats, forage barley, and wheat. The family saved seed from all seed crops (except the quinoa which will be bought) to be used for next year's planting, and sold none of their crops this year.

3. Sheep Production

The family's sheep enterprise is characterized by a herd of approximately sixty-four sheep, fifty-nine of which are crossbred (native/merino) and five are the native criollo sheep. The family owns forty-six of the sheep and takes care of the other eighteen for the grandmother.

Throughout the study period, the products the family consumed or used included milk, wool, mutton, and manure. They used 237 liters of milk to make cheese and for tea and soup. Of the 125 pounds of wool sheared, twenty-five pounds were used to make bed covers and clothing. Twelve sheep were slaughtered for festivals and thirty quintals of sheep manure were collected to fertilize their crops.

The decision to sell a sheep product is jointly made by the husband and wife depending on the need for money. Live sheep, sheep hides, and wool were the products that this family sold throughout the year to receive cash for the purchase of other goods. Since last year, they have sold a total of ten sheep, all of which were sold to a middleman. They also sold all twelve hides and about one hundred pounds of wool at the Sunday Patacamaya fair. The money from the sale of the live sheep was used to cover agricultural expenses, while the money received from the sale of sheep products was used for household expenses.

4. Dairy Production

This family has a herd of three dairy cows, one of which has a male calf less than six months old. One crossbred cow and her calf belong to the family and the two native bred cows belong to another relative.

The cattle products the family consumed or used were milk and manure. Although the family delivers most of the milk to PIL, on those days that PIL does not buy milk (Sundays and holidays) they use the milk in tea and in cheese and soup. The family has consumed about forty-two liters of milk from their cow herd. They also used fifty quintals of cow manure as cooking fuel.

They sold approximately 734 liters of milk to PIL and four live cows during the year. They sold the cows to cover agricultural, household, and educational expenses, while the money earned from milk was used to purchase food.

5. Herd Dynamics

The family currently has more sheep (but were unable to say by how many) than they did in years past. This is from natural reproduction of sheep rather than through any purchases. They would like to expand their herd over the next three years and plan to purchase more merino sheep using money from the sales of other agricultural products. In terms of the cattle holdings, they pasture fewer cattle than in the past. This decrease occurred when they sold three of the cattle at the market to cover their agricultural and household expenses and the fourth due to old age. They would like to purchase more cattle over the next four years to increase their herd size to possibly nine cattle.

6. Labor Allocation

Intra-household labor allocation can be divided among the agricultural enterprises this family maintains. In general, the wife is in charge of the sheep enterprise, and both the husband and the wife are active in the production of dairy and crops. The family allocates their child labor to the livestock. This section presents person-specific tasks within each enterprise.

a. Crop Production

The husband and wife share complete responsibility for the management and decision making in crop production. All phases of production require the labor of both husband and wife, as well as hired workers for some of the crops during harvest season. Table 4-4 shows each phase of production according to specific family members that were needed to complete each task. Task-specific activities will be described for each family member in the following paragraphs.

The first phase of production, tilling, is the only one in which the family hires outside labor. Cleaning the land of debris was completed by the husband and wife. These two stages were completed for all crops except potatoes. Planting has three stages that were only completed for potato production. The husband does the plowing, leaving the wife responsible for seeding and a hired person to complete the fertilization.

The couple worked together to complete most of the other phases of potato production and it wasn't until harvest that they received additional help from the oldest son. The three family members only work together during the weekends, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., leaving the wife to harvest alone in the mornings or sometimes the husband to harvest in the late afternoon on weekdays. This is due to the school commitments of the four oldest children. When the wife is harvesting during the week, the children take turns watching the livestock. The older children take the herd out in the morning and are met by their mother before noon, then the younger children join the mother in the afternoon to help bring the animals home.

b. Sheep Production

The wife takes responsibility for most of the labor in sheep production including herding and milking. She receives additional help from the grandmother to shear, bathe, cut the newborn female's tails and sell the sheep. The only task with which the husband helps is the collection of sheep manure.

The principal task identified by the wife is herding. The wife receives help from the children, depending on which one is out of school, for this particular task. Herding could be a relatively simple job; however, the wife is also in charge of cattle and has two very young children (a newborn baby and a two year old). Therefore, most of the day is spent separating the sheep from the cattle and caring for the children.

The second task, milking, is done by the wife before the animals are taken to graze. The animals are milked for six consecutive months; everyday during November and March and twenty days each month from December through February. It usually takes her about thirty minutes to get two liters of milk from eight sheep.

Selling, shearing, bathing, and cutting the newborn's tails are the tasks of the wife and grandmother. Whenever the family had sheep for sale it was the wife or grandmother who transported and sold the animals at Patacamaya on Sunday. They usually sold one or two at a time, therefore they were able to take the 6:00 a.m. truck into town Sunday mornings. Because all of the sheep were sold to a middleman, they did not need to spend more than a few hours in the morning at the market. They spend the money on agricultural goods.

The women both spend about one week shearing the entire herd at the rate of ten sheep per day. It is done once a year in the morning and/or evening, when they are not herding the sheep. After all of the sheep have been shorn, the women take the herd one morning to be bathed in a medicated sheep dip that controls external parasites.

The other production tasks associated with sheep, cutting the newborn female's tails and collection of sheep manure, were not readily identified by the family. The first task is shared by wife and grandmother who spent one afternoon cutting the tails of the newborn female sheep. Collecting sheep manure from the corral is completed once a year by the husband and wife. The process they use is a little different from other families in San Jose. They rake it into piles and then transport it to one large pile behind the house to decompose. It is then used to fertilize the potatoes and barley.

c. Dairy Production

The wife, with some help from the children, is responsible fopr the dairy enterprise. Her daily tasks include herding and milking. The husband is in charge of buying and selling dairy cattle and they work together to collect cattle manure and feed forage.

For most of the year (except during harvest season) the wife herds all the livestock (sheep and cattle) during the day. When the wife is away or tending to crop activities, however, the children herd the animals. She tethers the cows in one area and herds the sheep in another. This allows cattle grazing in optimal native rangeland areas with the most vegetation first, followed by sheep which graze the secondary stubble and other grasses left behind by cattle. The livestock are grazed in the higher altitudes from December through March, and low lands from April to November. Also, during the months of November and December the cattle are taken to graze alfalfa.

The wife took the responsibility of milking each morning before the herd was taken out to graze. This was done for seven months of the year and it usually took her thirty minutes to obtain approximately seven liters from one cow. The oldest son was responsible for delivering milk to the PIL office near their home.

The wife milks the animals in the mornings before taking them to graze. Because they have a newborn calf, she will milk for about five months (April through August) from only one cow for PIL.

Collection of cattle manure and feeding dried forage at home were tasks shared by the husband and wife. Usually between August and October the family feeds forages each evening. The other task, collection of cow manure, is done as needed for cooking.

The husband solicits outside help for breeding. The family uses artificial insemination with cows each year. This year they inseminated one cow and were waiting to see if it was successful.

The husband transports and sells their cows at the market. It takes him five hours to walk with the cows to the Patacamaya Sunday market. Some sales take a longer time because he has to negotiate prices with other farmers until he finds a suitable price. He would be responsible for choosing and negotiating the price if he were to by any cattle.

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