Eficiencia técnica y adopción de tecnologías en la ganadería vacuna en Uruguay

Cattle grazing is the activity with the largest individual use of land, but it is questioned due to its environmental footprint. In this context, increasing the productivity of livestock is relevant to reduce environmental impact, improve the competitiveness of livestock farms, and increase food production. To advance on this path, it becomes necessary to understand the variability of the level of production. This paper measures the technical efficiency per cattle ranch in beef production in Uruguay in the 2016/2015 agricultural year, for ranches without feedlots and with breeding cattle, using data from the 2016 National Livestock Survey with the model of Wang (2002). A translog stochastic frontier of production is estimated with 3 inputs (stocking, surface and workers), a set of control variables (pastoral suitability of the soil, percentage of the soil with improvements, livestock orientation, cattle orientation and agroecological region), and explanatory variables of technical inefficiency (type of society, land tenure relationship, livestock technologies and technological advice). The average level of technical efficiency of the sample (at the national level) is 81.9% (71.6%). The contextual variables agronomic and veterinary technical assistance, artificial insemination, premature weaning, pregnancy diagnosis of cows served, type of land tenure and legal status, are statistically significant to explain technical efficiency. It is concluded that at the national level, through an improvement in the management of ranches, it is possible to increase beef production by 39.7% on average.