This study evaluated the performance of 21 beef cattle modal production systems that conduct only the raising phase. These production systems were developed in 21 municipalities in seven Brazilian states. We used two different DEA BCC models, corresponding to different points of view. Firstly we used an economic model that measured the ability of a production system to generate revenue with the preservation of native forest, using labor, capital, and current spending as inputs. The socio-environmental approach, corresponding to the second BCC model, uses the production factor labor as an output. In that model our interest was to assess whether the capital costs generate economic, environmental, and social benefits. Weight restrictions were imposed on the output variables of each model to explain the proposed viewpoints and to avoid inconsistent results. The results pointed out sources of inefficiency in terms of labor with low qualification, and use of bulls of questionable quality, factors that are common in extensive systems. These are some of the major bottlenecks in animal production systems as a whole.

Neste artigo propõe-se analisar comparativamente o desempenho de sistemas de produção modais de pecuária extensiva de corte na fase de cria em 21 municípios brasileiros. A cria é a fase da atividade que sustenta toda a cadeia de produção da pecuária de corte. É usado o modelo de análise envoltória de dados (DEA) com retornos variáveis de escala. O objetivo é medir o desempenho da decisão do produtor em relação à composição do sistema produtivo. As variáveis usadas são número de reprodutores, quantidade de bezerros e vacas de descarte. Dos 21 sistemas avaliados, quatro foram DEA BCC eficientes e a maioria dos sistemas avaliados opera na região de retornos crescentes de escala.

In this article, the performance of extensive livestock modal production systems was analyzed comparatively during its rearing phase in 21 Brazilian municipalities. This phase constitutes the activity that sustains the entire livestock production chain. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) models were used with variable returns to scale. The objective was to measure the performance of the producer's decision regarding the composition of the production system. The number of bull breeders, number of calves and number of cull cows were the variables used. Four of the 21 systems evaluated were DEA efficient and most of them were operating under increasing returns to scale.

The cow-calf beef production sector in Brazil has a wide variety of operating systems. This suggests the identification and the characterization of homogeneous regions of production, with consequent implementation of actions to achieve its sustainability. In this paper we attempted to measure the performance of 21 livestock modal production systems, in their cow-calf phase. We measured the performance of these systems, considering husbandry and production variables. The proposed approach is based on data envelopment analysis (DEA). We used unitary input DEA model, with apparent input orientation, together with the efficiency measurements generated by the inverted DEA frontier. We identified five modal production systems typologies, using the isoefficiency layers approach. The results showed that the knowledge and the processes management are the most important factors for improving the efficiency of beef cattle production systems.