Evaluation of good agricultural practices and sustaintability indicators in livestock systems under tropical conditions

The present scenario of Brazilian livestock farming presents a poor ability of management skills and an inexperienced adoption of modern technologies. The aim of this research was to study the setback of carrying out the Brazilian Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) on sustainability indicators, focusing at production in the economic, productive, natural and social conditions of beef cattle breeding systems in the Amazonian biome in the northern part of Mato Grosso, Brazil. Researchers conducted the experiment in the town of Alta Floresta between August 2012 and August 2014 in six cattle ranching lands. They carried out diagnoses in the properties, and, afterwards, applied an application to the producers, focusing on their supervisory skills, their technological knowledge status and their strength for choosing some technologies in sanitary and reproductive management, feeding systems, types of supplements and water sources provided to the animals and to the facilities. The team collected the technical and commercial data between 2013 and 2014. In addition, they carried out a complementary examination to test enteric methane emissions. Based on the results, the following GAP made it possible to reach better indicators than those found in pastures that tried none GAP. Complementarily, methane emissions per kg of live weight were lower in intensified areas. Intensification generated better economic indicators, with gross margin differences of US$ 318.89. The results in the intensified areas, when compared to the one in the conventional systems, presented a 16% increase in productive weight in live weight.ha−1, with a 2.05% increase in investment return rates and US$ 142.94 in net present value. The GAP has provided economic, social and environmental gains, such as an increase of almost 5% in investment return rates, generating higher production, continuing employment in farms with historical negative gross margins and reducing the methane emissions per kg of live weight in the dry season by 54%.