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In the backyard systems in urban and semi-urban areas of the central highlands of Mexico, agriculture and livestock activities are practiced. In order to know the behavior of the economic variables in these farms, a nonprobabilistic sampling by quotas was carried out, using the snowball technique, which consisted of applying surveys to a total of 92 producers, which was designed to collect information on the general characteristics of the backyard, social, and economic system, as well as the products generated from agriculture and livestock. With the information collected, an inventory of the plant and animal species that are produced in the backyard system was made, in addition to estimating economic income, variable costs, fixed costs, total costs, profits and the benefit-cost ratio for carrying out livestock activities agriculture or both in backyard systems. It was found that farmers have an average space in the backyard of 360.5 m2 to carry out activities of agriculture, livestock or both. Farmers who carry out agriculture and livestock activities generate higher income and economic profits, compared to those who only carry out one activity, obtaining a benefit of 27.44 cents for each dollar invested, compared to 16.64 and 18.00 cents for developing the activity agriculture and livestock respectively. The agricultural and livestock activity in the backyard systems of the highlands of Mexico, represent an option to generate economic income for families, and generate food products for self-consumption and reduce expenses for food purchases in the family nucleus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) is a highly contagious enteric disease of pigs, which has caused great economic losses to the swine industry worldwide. The known measure for PED control prior to the development and launch of vaccines in 2017 in Mexico, was "feedback" or "liquefaction". It was a widely used measure during the PED outbreak in 2013; however, there is no homogeneity in its use among the various authors who recommend it. Currently, several studies have experimented with other types of prophylaxis, such as oral immunization with PED virus obtained from cell culture isolation, which allows quantification of the infectious virus and ensures that only the virus, and no other agent, is being used as inoculum. The objective of the present study was to compare the time of seroconversion in sows inoculated with the quantified virus with four different vehicles (milk, wheat, direct, and water) and different doses of vehicle (1 ml, 2 ml, and 3 ml) at different pregnancy stages and with a different number of farrowings. The study was conducted at CEIEPP, a full-cycle farm with 170 females. The present study showed that the vehicles with the best results were the inoculum with water and the direct inoculum combined with the 1 ml dose, as the combination of these vehicles and an inoculum dose resulted in seroconversion in more than 90 % of the sows from the second week post inoculation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to evaluate the environmental performance of cow milk production in small and medium scale systems in Mexico, through life cycle analysis with a cradle to farm gate approach, for the period 2021-2030. The established functional unit was 1 kg of milk corrected for fat and protein. The impact assessment was carried out with the OpenLCA 1.11.0 software, using the ReCiPe method, considering seven impact categories: agricultural land occupation (ALO), marine ecotoxicity (ME), human toxicity (HT), climate change (CC), fossil depletion (FD), soil acidification (SA), and water depletion (WD). Among the main results of the research, the production of cattle feed was identified as the chief contributor to environmental loads in most of the categories with percentages above 71 %, while on-farm emissions contribute to the environmental loads for the CC (28 %), FD (26 %) and SA (59 %) categories. A comparison was made between pessimistic, base and optimistic scenarios for the years 2021 and 2030, which confirmed an improvement in environmental efficiency in the optimistic scenario, the increase in production volume represents a decrease of 6 % and 5 %, respectively, in the assessed impact categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]