The Human Ecology of Cattle Raising in the Peruvian Amazon: The View from the Farm

This paper, based on two years of fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon, analyzes cattle raising as one component of farmers' adaptive strategies in the social and ecological contexts of that region. The paper examines why cattle raising is a widespread production activity on small-to-medium farms in the region, and discusses its ecological impacts at the farm level. The ecological impacts include a tendency to retard biomass accumulation after moderate-to-heavy grazing, thereby prolonging the fallow period necessary for site recovery. The paper analyzes the implications of this ecological change on the viability of small-to-medium farms in this environment.