Socioeconomic profile of producers and dairy technological of farms in the southern mesoregion of Santa Catarina

This study characterized the socioeconomic profile of milk producers and dairy technological of farms in the southern mesoregion of Santa Catarina. Following a 6.5% sampling of total farms by municipality, 95% confidence level, 5% sampling error, and group heterogeneity, data were collected from 308 farms, 22 of which were excluded due to insufficient data. The farmers were selected randomly, and information extracted from an electronic form, addressing social, economic, technical and technological issues. The data were analyzed using factor, cluster, and discriminant analysis. As farms with the main activity of dairy farming, they have an average area of 20.79 hectares and a production of 12.18 liters per animal per day. I n the factor analysis, the first factor was related to the area and productivity of farms and the second factor to sanitary control and the feed variety of the animals. The cluster analysis formed three clusters; the first and the second were composed of larger farms and areas, and the other consisted of smaller farms, the latter involving more producers. As farms are characterized by low production, there is clearly a deficiency in technical support for producers.