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Cycle 9 (2020 Deadline)
Improving sustainability and resilience of Peruvian Amazon systems through silvopastoralism
PI: Carlos Gomez (cagomez@lamolina.edu.pe), Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina (UNALM)
U.S. Partner: Heathcliffe Riday, U.S. Department of Agriculture – Agricultural Research Service (USDA/ARS), U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center
Project Dates: April 2021 - March 2024
Project Overview:
 | | Cattle in Cuñumbuque in San Martin Region. Photo Credit: PI Gomez |
Peru recently included the establishment of silvopastoral systems (SPS) with improved pastures in its national determined contributions (NDCs) with the goal to reduce direct and indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by livestock production and to increase sustainability and resilience of pastoral systems. Sustainability and resilience of SPS compared with other pasture-based systems have been studied by a few authors in Peru, but none has looked at various sustainability measures and resilience within a single study. This project will evaluate sustainability and resilience in a holistic assessment. It will compare SPS with conventional pasture-based systems (CPS) through Life Cycle Assessment, economic assessment, socioeconomic assessment, resilience assessment, and carbon storage. The Life Cycle Assessment will estimate the effect of each farm system on land use, GHG emission, acidification, and eutrophication. The economic assessment will use cost reductions and a profit gain analysis to estimate the costs and benefits of the implementation of SPS. The socioeconomic assessment will be based on a qualitative assessment using structured interviews to determine barriers to the adoption of SPS. The resilience assessment will consider the dry season as a “disturbance” and will evaluate resilience of SPS and CPS as a ratio of key performance indicators in the dry season over the wet season. Carbon storage in soil and vegetation will be measured in the same farms.
The U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center plays a crucial role in this work. The U.S. partner and other scientists from the Center will share their expertise in the agroecosystem carbon storage potential of agricultural lands and provide training in additional measurement techniques and data analysis. Those techniques include the use of Landsat and MODIS satellite data to estimate productivity and ecosystem respiration of pastoral systems. Neither of these techniques have been used previously in Peruvian livestock research. Data generated in this project will be made available to regional databases on carbon storage to inform soil carbon models. In addition, the data will be made available for the development of monitoring, reporting, and verification mechanisms for SPS with the aim to access carbon markets to help finance the implementation of SPS.
Livestock is among the main drivers of deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon. Silvopastoral systems with improved pastures can avoid pasture degradation and recover degraded pastures in the region. They can also lead to increased pasture quality and yield, which reduces the land area needed for livestock production. Thus, well managed SPS not only reduce deforestation but also increase livestock production efficiency. The team will work together with the Peruvian Institute of Agricultural Innovation, which has a long-term relationship with farmers, to ensure that farmers are directly involved and that the research is put into practice.
Summary of Recent Activities:
From April to the end of June 2023, graduate student Victor Irigoin systematized the results of the interviews carried out with the 20 selected livestock producers to obtain the specific data necessary for the CLEANED tool and an economic evaluation survey on farms, both of which activities related to his thesis research. Based on this systematization, an expanded summary entitled “Biotechnical, economic and environmental impact assessment of pastoral and silvopastoral systems in the Peruvian Amazon using the CLEANED tool” was written, and it will be presented at the XII International Congress of Silvopastoral Systems, to be held in October 2023 in Montevideo, Uruguay. In addition, Master’s student Rosario Salazar analyzed soil carbon data at two depths (0-15 and 15-30 cm) in pastoral and silvopastoral systems as part of work on her thesis. She will also be presenting her work at the Congress in Uruguay. The title of her presentation is “Carbon stock potential in pastoral and silvopastoral systems in the Peruvian Amazon.”
From June 4 to 8, 2023, members of this PEER team also participated in the International Symposium on the Nutrition of Herbivores, which was held in the city of Florianopolis, Brazil. They presented an abstract entitled “Agroecological transition and holistic sustainability assessment of smallholder dairy cattle systems.” The work used TAPE (Tool for Agroecological Performance Evaluation), a novel survey tool developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations with partners, with the goal being to make a holistic assessment of the sustainability of 22 smallholder dairy farms in the Peruvian Amazon.
In the upcoming quarter, Dr. Gomez and his team are anticipating publication of three papers. In October 2023, the results of the TAPE (first stage workshop) and CLEANED tool will be validated for producers in the San Martín Region. This will involve an event aimed at farmers in the Cuñumbuqui dairy area and including the participation of local research institutions.
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