Technologies for obtaining meat in sustainable agriculture systems with citrus plantations

摘要

The integration of cattle raising with agriculture is one from the few alternatives at hand to produce food animal at a low cost. The introduction of animals in the agricultural systems may offer many advantages, being this integration the key to thedesign of agricultural production systems with an agricultural-ecological base. However, these systems are not very easy to manage. It is necessary to examine all the biological factors carefully in order to get the highest productivity of the system ina sustainable way (Sanchez, 1995). Although this is an alternative to increase the animal production, without the need of new lands, there is some resistance in practice to achieving this diversification and integration. In this context, the possibilityoffered by citrus fruit areas for the exploitation of ovine cattle has been indicated (Borroto et al, 1995). The development of this work in fact sought as an objective: to go deeper into the knowledge about the acceptability of the branch of fruit crops, looking for dissuasive alternatives to the ovine cattle handling inside the plantations, aimed at finding handling systems that potentially enabled the meat production, but minimizing the damages to fruit crops( browsing of the branches) and this way to contribute to make real the diversification and animal integration in the farms of this crop in Cuba.