There were 487.2 million head of cattle in the Americas in 2004, and in the countries of the DR-CAFTA, the USA, the DR and the Central American countries, there were 107.4 million head. Of course, quantity in this case does not mean there are any advantages, since the US has 95 million head that are superior in quality and production than the 192 million head that Brazil has. Costa Rica, with half as many head produces more milk than the Dominican Republic.
Economist Frank A. Tejada writes in El Caribe that the problem is cattlemen in DR-CAFTA countries have with the free trade deal is that the US has a better quality of animals to produce meat and milk, because they have pure strains of cattle, a temperate climate, efficient technology, solid infrastructures at the farm level, low interest financing, marketing for their goods, subsidies and direct help that is more than US$12.6 billion a year.
Meanwhile, those in Central America and the DR do not have a defined breed, since in the tropics there is no breed of cattle that produces meat and milk to a high degree. That is to say that these countries will never have high production of meat and milk.
Tejada says that if his readers want to test this, they just have to go to a first class restaurant and look at the menu choices of imported or local meats. Milk production in the US is 781 billion liters and that of the other countries is much less, with Costa Rica at 790 million liters, the DR at 637 million, Nicaragua at 614 million, Honduras at 598 million, El Salvador at 394 million, and Guatemala at 270 million.
In the US, nearly all of the milk produced is pasteurized or homogenized, in Costa Rica only 60%, El Salvador 30%, Honduras 23%, DR 22%, Nicaragua and Guatemala 20/%. What this says is that in the region there is a huge deficit in the consumption of milk and milk products and the majority of the milk is not processed, which can lead to disease transmission.
In the case of Nicaragua, 95% of the milk is produced by cattle that are called “double duty” and in the DR they are called “come and go” cattle. This type of cattle come into the pen to be milked and are then turned out to pasture. The system is non-technological, but it is perhaps the only system that can compete with the high productivity of the American cattle, because the production costs of the “come and go” cattle is very low. In the DR 65% of the cattle are of the “come and go” variety, but 49% of the pastures are growing natural grasses, which will require a large investment in order to convert them to pastures with varieties such as Tanzania, Mulato, Toledo or King Grass, which are more appropriate for raising cattle.
Cattlemen in the region have to look for options that will permit them to continue in the business, and for this they have to be competitive. They could do this by producing organic milk and meat, for export, although it is easier in this system to produce just meat.
Another option is to produce milk products for the people of each country that live overseas. For example, a study could be done of the 1.4 million Dominicans that live in the United States and determine the demand for products such as cheeses, candies and so forth.
Each country in the region could do this, according to Tejada. Costa Rica is the only country that is not asleep on this issue, waiting to be eaten by the lion. They have begun the cattle project designed to increase productivity, they carried out an analysis of the advantages and disadvantages that they have and the hired experts fro the famous INCAE school to do a strategic study and learn how to produce and penetrate the countries that make up the DR-CAFTA.