Behavior of prices of products and supplies and monthly economic results between 2016 and 2019 in small-scale pig systems with and without advisory intervention in Argentina

Abstract

In Argentina, small and medium pig producers are predominant in the sector. In general they do not have professional assistance, and due to lack of adequate economic information, they make management decisions that do not achieve
productive potential, lose profits, experience greater negative economic results that discourage productive investments and many of them quit the activity. In this work, the behavior of products and inputs prices are taken in consideration.
Also evaluate the monthly economic results of two complete cycle and free range pig production models with sixty sows, with different management due to professional assistance and low-value investments. The measurements were made from January 2016 to December 2019 and show an important variability in prices and economic results in both models. The less productive model compared to the model with assistance, achieves lower global costs but higher unit costs, lower profits and greater losses in amount and duration. These results demonstrate for these models of the same scale that, in similar economic scenarios, the strategies that optimize production processes with the available resources, with professional assistance, result in an increase of profits and reduce the risk of economic losses.