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

IV. FIVE FAMILIES IN SAN JOSÉ LLANGA (continued)

Case Study Five

This family was chosen because they have a medium sized milk production unit in San José Llanga. They are the only family that is not considering moving out of the community within the next five years. The husband, a corregidor (state representative), is very involved in the community politics of San Jose and takes trips away from home for work purposes. His position is not a paid one.

This is a family very committed to the education of their children. At the age of fifteen the children are sent to La Paz to attend secondary school and are given the chance to enroll at the university. The family pays about eighty bolivianos per month to provide for food, shelter and basic living expenses.

1. Demographics

This older family owns land in three zones: Barrio, Calunimaya, and Chaconimaya, but chose to live and maintain their animals in Barrio. They have seven children, ranging in age from eight through twenty-five years; the three youngest live at home. The others live in La Paz and Oruro, but sometimes return to San José to help with the crops. The three youngest girls assist the family with the household and agricultural chores. As table 5-1 indicates, all family members have been, or are currently attending school and only the three youngest children live with their parents in San José Llanga.

The husband and wife are both originarios. They were born and raised in the community and inherited land from their parents. The home in which they live was inherited from the wife's parents who now live in Choconimaya. The land that is in crop production is part of the husband's parents' land.

This family relies primarily on the sale of livestock (both sheep and cows), dairy production, and sales of manure for its cash income. Even though the husband works as the community representative and travels to Patacamaya and La Paz quite often, his work is voluntary. With the exception of a small amount of cash received for selling artesonia, there were no other forms of supplemental income this past year.

2. Crops

The family has approximately twenty-four and a half hectares of land divided among crops, fallow, and native rangeland (table 5.2). The family rents ten hectares and uses two others from the husband's family to provide native forages for the livestock. Management decisions for land-use are jointly made by the husband and wife.

The crops shown in table 5-3, produced over the last crop year, can be used in four different ways: human consumption, animal consumption, sale, and seed. Weather events resulted in a bad crop year. In February, a frost ruined the quinoa and wheat. Those fields will not be harvested. The only crop that was left for the family to consume was potatoes. What was left in the quinoa and wheat fields will be grazed by the livestock along with forage oats, forage barley and alfalfa. The family was able to save seed only from potatoes to be used for next year's planting season and will not sell any of their crops this year.

3. Sheep Production

The family's sheep enterprise is characterized by a herd of eighty-three crossbred sheep. All of the sheep are owned by the family and they do not have sheep pastured by other families.

Throughout the study period, the sheep products the family consumed included milk, wool, mutton, and manure. They used twenty-eight liters of milk to make cheese and for tea and soup. Of the two hundred pounds of wool shorn, one hundred pounds was used to make bed covers and clothing. Eight sheep were slaughtered during festivals and twenty quintals of sheep manure were collected to fertilize the crops.

The decision to sell a sheep product is jointly made by the husband and wife depending on the need for money. Live sheep, manure, wool and hides were the products this family sold throughout the year. Since last year, they have sold twenty sheep in Patacamaya to a middleman for meat. About 120 quintals of sheep manure was sold to an independent buyer that frequently travels to San José to collect fertilizer from various families. They also sold about one hundred pounds of wool and eight hides at the Sunday Patacamaya fair. The money earned from the sale of live sheep was used for educational expenses related to their children in La Paz. The money earned from sheep products was used to buy household products and food.

4. Dairy Production

This family has a herd of four dairy cows, three with male calves and one with a female calf. All of the cows and their calves are crossbreeds; three of the pairs are owned by the family and one pair they take care of for another person.

The family used milk and manure throughout the year. Although the family delivers milk to PIL, on those days that PIL does not collect milk, the family uses it in tea and to make cheese and soup. Since last year the family has only consumed ten liters of milk from their cow herd. They used twenty-five quintals of cow manure as cooking fuel.

Milk, live cattle, and manure were the three things the family sold last year. By the end of the year they had sold approximately 2,066 liters of milk to PIL, four live cows, and 120 quintals of manure. The money earned from the sale of live cattle was used to help finance the children's educational and living expenses in La Paz, while the money from the other dairy products was used to cover both farm and household expenses.

5. Herd Dynamics

Their sheep herd has increased by thirty head since five years ago. This was accomplished by letting the sheep breed naturally. The family does not have any specific plans for expanding the herd other than at the natural rate. The cattle herd is about the same size as it was five years ago. Although the family does have reproductive dairy cows, they sell the calves. They would like to have several more cows in the future, but because they have school age children, they can not afford to expand. Instead of reinvesting the money earned from the sale of cattle, they usually use it to help defray the cost of the children's educational and living expenses in the city.

6. Labor Allocation

Intra-household labor allocation can be divided among the different agricultural enterprises this family maintains. In general, the husband is in charge of the dairy enterprise, the wife is in charge of the sheep enterprise, and both are actively involved in the crop enterprise. The family allocates their child labor if they need assistance at a particular time. For the most part, when the children are in school they are only required to help with tasks in the morning and early evening. The rest of the day they are supposed to devote to schoolwork. Person-specific tasks within each agricultural enterprise will be broken down and addressed.

a. Crop Production

Crop production is one enterprise in which the husband and wife share decision- making responsibilities, but not necessarily the workload. Only those activities associated with potato production require the labor of both. For all other crops, the husband used a tractor to complete the planting phases and only needed assistance from the wife to clear the land after tilling and for harvest. In general, as shown in table 5-4, each phase of production can be broken down according to the family members that were needed to complete each task.

The first phase of production, tilling, was only done for potatoes and forage oats. The family hired a laborer to plow the land with a tractor. The second phase, cleaning the land of debris was completed by the husband and wife. The third phase, planting, has three separate stages, all of which were completed for potato production only. The oldest daughter helps the parents during this phase. The husband does the plowing, while the wife and daughter follow behind to seed and fertilize.

After planting, the couple works together on weeding and fertilization (with urea) for potato production. What should also be noted is that the husband plants without the help of any other family members in all crops except potatoes. Instead of using the traditional plow, he rides with the owner of a tractor and throws the seeds out behind him as the driver passes a row. This method is much faster and he can accomplish the planting phase in one morning for each crop.

Harvesting is done by the husband and wife with additional assistance from the oldest daughter for potatoes. Quinoa and wheat crops were not harvested this past year due to damage from frosts in February. The family will allow the livestock to graze the fields.

The three family members work together to harvest potatoes during the weekend only, when it is possible for the other children to herd the livestock. This is due to school commitments for the three youngest children.

The family feeds the forage crops to the cows in the fields while it is being harvested because they do not have any burros to transport the crops to the house. When all of the harvesting is complete for alfalfa, forage oats, and forage barley, the family will pay to transport the leftovers of each crop to the home for use during the winter.

b. Sheep Production

The wife allocates most of her labor during the year to sheep production. She does the herding, milking, and selling. The tasks that are shared by the couple include: shearing, bathing, cutting the newborn females' tails, and collection of sheep manure.

The principal task identified by the wife is herding. This is an activity that she has been doing since she was a child. It is a very active job, especially when she herds in the areas where the crops have been planted. She never receives help from the other family members and one can sense that it is a job she has long ago grown tired of.

The second task, milking, is done by the wife, with help from two daughters before the animals are taken out to graze. The animals are milked from February through April. Each morning they spend a half hour and obtain about one and a half liters of milk. In total they obtained about twenty-eight liters from the herd this year.

Whenever the family had sheep for sale it was the wife's responsibility to transport and sell the animals at the Patacamaya Sunday fair. She would usually leave early Sunday morning and walk five hours to market with the sheep. Because she sold all the sheep to a middleman, she did not need to spend more than a few hours at the market. She spends part of the money on household goods and saves part for the children's educational expenses.

Shearing, bathing, cutting the newborn's tails, and collection of sheep manure were tasks shared by the wife and husband. In general, one sheep per morning is sheared in the corral before they go out to graze. It takes them both about forty-five minutes to shear each animal. After all of the sheep have been shorn, they are taken one morning to a public bath yard to control external parasites.

Cutting the newborn females' tails and collection of sheep manure were tasks not readily identified by the family. Collection of sheep manure from the corral was performed monthly by the couple and stored for later use during the planting season or to be sold.

c. Dairy Production

The husband allocates his labor mainly to dairy cattle. His dairy cattle responsibilities included herding, buying, and selling. The husband and wife work together to breed, collect manure, and feed forage. The daughters are primarily responsible for milking, although the wife helps.

Usually, the husband herds the cows alone, but if he is away or attending to other activities, one of the daughters will take over the herding responsibilities. He usually grazess in the highlands from December through April, switching to the lower lands around harvest season, from May through November. Each weekday afternoon during the harvest season, the husband takes the cows with him while he cuts the forage crops.

The family will solicit outside help with breeding. Last year, the family used their own bull to breed their four cows; however, this year they plan to use artificial insemination from the PIL organization to breed their cows. Either the husband or wife will spend the morning waiting for the inseminator to arrive and breed the cow. This is probably the cheapest method of breeding the animals, short of owning their own bull.

The husband takes care of the transport and sale of their cows at the market. It takes him between five and six hours to walk with the cows to the Patacamaya Sunday fair. Because he sold the animals to a middleman, he did not spend the whole day negotiating prices with other farmers. If they were to buy any cows he would be responsible for choosing the cattle and negotiating the price. The money was saved to help cover educational costs of the children.

The three daughters take primary responsibility for milking the cows and delivering it to the PIL office in the mornings before taking them to graze. It usually takes about an hour each morning to milk four cows. They milked the cows every month, except October through December. The calves are muzzled each morning to prevent them from drinking too much milk. The girls remove the muzzles after they have finished milking the cows.

Feeding dried forage at home and collection of cattle manure for cooking were tasks shared between the husband and wife. Usually from June to October the family feeds cut forages to the cows each evening. The second task, collection of cow manure, is generally done once a year, in May, or when needed for cooking. They collect the bosta from the area where the cows are tethered at night and store it in piles behind the house.

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