GRANADA WORKSHOP REPORT 14.

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Research priorities for livestock production and rural development in the Montados Systems in Portugal

Manuel Belo Moreira and Inocêncio Seita Coelho

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The following generic conditions and the consideration that the montados systems are agrosilvopastoral systems created by human agency to achieve socio-economic goals, constitute an evidence that is the background framework that must be present in any study of the montados systems. That is, crops, trees, and the livestock are only parts of the system that cannot be object of research as if other components do not exist. This not means that one cannot focus the research on livestock, but only that the other components and their interface with livestock cannot be forgotten.

If we acknowledge that the less favoured areas of the South of Europe have specific geoclimatic, economic, demographic, social and cultural conditions, than it is possible to summarize some research priorities. Referring specific conditions, in the areas of the montados systems, means to be aware of the following features that roughly characterize these systems:

• Large percentage of active population is aged and still related with agriculture, since economic activity is mainly dependent on agriculture. That is, what is not agriculture is related with agriculture, such as tourism and game, commercial and other services. Industrial activities not related to agriculture almost do not exist, and a very important unemployment rate is the rule;
• low densities of population and low natality rate indicates a trend toward human desertification;
• the agriculture activity of the montado is irrelevant to the European agricultural surplus. It is enough to note that this is an agriculture mainly based on dry areas with a very low productive capacity;
• very fragile ecosystems. The montado system is the result of the human activity shaping the natural ecosystem by cultivating the land, with large crop rotations, using the fallow and the natural pasture under trees as well as the fruits of the holm-oak or the cork-oak to feed livestock.

Thus, one important line of research that has been absent concerns the diagnosis of the present relations between the montado systems and the social-economic environment. Which, among other questions, must look at how livestock interface with crops and people in these systems. That is, to look at the problems rose by the PAC regulations and the foreseen economic liberalization on the economic survival of the system. Research line that must not only characterize the present situation, but must raise an appraisal of the potentialities of development under different conditions.

Other line of research concerns the need to study the forms of technical management of the montados systems, mainly the livestock management. The studies at the micro level must be related with the actual forms of agricultural marketing, and the bottlenecks that can exist at this level. An essential appraisal must be done relating the technical management with the economic management of these systems under the PAC regulations promoting extensification. That is, one must evaluate the perverse effects of the way that the extensification policies are applied to these systems.

Finally, a large work must be done studying the relations between the montado system and the preservation of the environment. Goals, like improving or maintaining the biodiversity and the sustainability of the system. That is look at its reproduction forms in a way that the improvement of biodiversity and the maintenance of the system do not be harmed by the necessary economic activity to keep people in these zones.

Considering our aim, one of the main questions to be responded is to find forms of livestock management that, on the one hand, cause no harm to the natural regeneration of the forestry component of the system, but that, on the other hand, can assure shrub control, increase biodiversity and prevent fire, conciliating these goals with the survival of the economic operation.

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