Sustainability of holistic and conventional cattle ranching in the seasonally dry tropics of Chiapas, Mexico

•We compared management and ecological outcomes on holistic and conventional ranches.•Holistic ranchers use rotational grazing, minimize purchased inputs and do not burn.•Their pastures have denser grass, deeper topsoil, and more earthworms.•Holistic management is leading to greater ecological and economic sustainability. Conventional cattle ranching in the lowlands of Chiapas, Mexico typically employs extensive grazing, annual pasture burns and frequent applications of agrochemicals, threatening biodiversity and long-term productivity. A small group of innovative ranchers in the Central Valleys are converting to holistic management through careful land-use planning, rotational grazing, diversified forage, and diminished use of purchased inputs. We compared the sustainability of 18 conventional and seven holistic, dual-purpose ranches, using three sets of sustainability metrics. First, we combined semistructured interviews and field observations to better describe the two productions systems and to calculate an “Organic Conversion Index” (OCI), combining economic, social, technological and environmental indicators. Holistic ranchers have more pasture divisions, higher grazing pressure, greater lengths of time between pasture burns, greater milk productivity, larger forest reserves, lower cow and calf mortality, purchase less hay and feed, and use less herbicides and pesticides than their conventional neighbors (T-tests and Fisher’s Exact Tests; all p