Selection and breeding of Pé-Duro cattle: natures and cultures, breeds and mixing

• Grant number: 16/00147-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: November 01, 2016
• End date: August 01, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Rural Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Felipe Ferreira Vander Velden
• Grantee: Natacha Simei Leal
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project intends to analyze, from an anthropological perspective, practices and settings of the most recent investments in the preservation and selection of a type of cattle from the Brazilian Northeast, State of Piauí, named Pé-Duro. These mixed race animals are originated from crossovers between breeds of the Iberian Peninsula, which arrived in Brazil in still in the sixteenth century. They were endangered from the second half of the twentieth century because of the emergence of the nacional meat industry; Indian races (zebu) were successively imported to the country to supply the market, dominating the fields and pastures of the Brazilian Midwest, Southeast, North and also in Northeast. Currently, a breeders and researchers of Embrapa (Brazilian Corporation of Agricultural Research Agency) to keep these cattle, they try to defend not only the economic viability and zootechnical these types for the meat industry, but the historical and cultural importance of the Pé-Duro to the State of Piauí. This project aims to monitor and describe the recent investments in "breeding the Pé-Duro cattle illuminated by expensive concepts to husbandry, such as genetics, culture, blood, miscegenation, economics, purity and pedigree. Moreover, taking the centrality of the concept of race in husbrandy, aims to demonstrate the conflicts and controversies that did, and continue doing, the national cattle herd.