Abstract

The milk production of sixteen country properties of Valdivia province, pertaining to Agriculture Management Program of Agriculture Management Center of Rio Bueno CEGA SA was characterized using two agriculture periods: 2000/01 and 2001/02. The characterization was made through principal component analysis, present in the statistics program SPSS 10.0. From the analysis there were obtained 3 components of the nine analyzed that characterized the agriculture producer for this study: economic component, superficies, and quality. For the first component the variable is the average price obtained by litre of milk, which generates uncertainty to the producers when commercializing their product. For the second component, it was concluded that within the group of analyzed producers, differences in the amount of hectares of their respective operations take place, which shows that there is not any agreement between the size of the surface and the economic indicators. For the third component, whose variable is the count of somatic cells, it indicates the increasing preoccupation for improving the quality of the product since this indicator produces an increase or dicrease in the price of the litre of milk. A detailed analysis of the producers was made and its relation with the three components. Through the development of the characterization there could be obtained a series of groups with the common characteristics that appear among the producers.