Tipología y caracterización de cunicultores en los Estados del centro de México

This study aimed to identify and characterize the type of rabbit farmers in Mexico's central states based on social, productive, technological, economic, and efficiency factors; this information could help outline recommendations that support cuniculture practices. A survey was designed and applied to 155 rabbit production units (RPU) to obtain information about their socioeconomic, productive, and economic status; this survey also evaluated their use of facilities and technological components. Fourteen original variables were defined and helped stratify rabbit farmers through multivariate methods. The resulting groups were characterized and compared by analyzing variance following a completely randomized model for the continuous variables and a test of homogeneity for the categorical variables. Four factors accounted for 67.5 % of the total variation. Due to the factor loadings of the analyzed variables, these factors were identified as 1) productive capacity of the RPU, 2) technical capacity of the RPU, 3) farmer's capacity, and 4) technical efficiency of the RPU. Three types of producers were identified: small-scale family rabbit farmer (37 %), medium-scale family rabbit farmer (50 %), and business rabbit farmer (13 %). This typology could contribute to the outline of cuniculture-specific public policies to increase the efficiency and productivity of RPU in Mexico's central states.