# How hard the land is stocked

**Uruguay carries 0.856 cattle per hectare of livestock land (12,265,269 cattle on 14.32 million ha). The densest department, San José, carries 1.67; the sparsest of the big grazing departments, Artigas, 0.65.**

## Findings

- Density follows the sown pasture: across departments, Spearman ρ = **0.847** between cattle per hectare and the share of land under *praderas*. Nationally 72.4% of declared land is native grassland and only 6.9% sown pasture: intensity is a thin southern veneer.
- Of 629 census areas with at least 100 livestock hectares, the densest is area **317003 in Canelones** at 8.33 cattle per hectare; the median area carries 0.91.

## Charts

![Map: stocking density is highest in the south-west (San José, Colonia, Canelones) and lowest in the north-west (Artigas, Salto).](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/stocking-intensity/charts/density-map.png)

*Cattle per hectare of livestock land, 2025.* [Interactive](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/stocking-intensity/index.html) · [Vega-Lite spec](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/stocking-intensity/charts/density-map.vl.json)

![Scatter: departments with more sown pasture carry more cattle per hectare; San José and Colonia top right, Artigas and Salto bottom left.](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/stocking-intensity/charts/density-vs-praderas.png)

*density-vs-praderas.* [Interactive](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/stocking-intensity/index.html) · [Vega-Lite spec](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/stocking-intensity/charts/density-vs-praderas.vl.json)

![Strip plot: each department's census areas as ticks along a density axis; the south-west spreads furthest right.](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/stocking-intensity/charts/areas-strip.png)

*Cattle per livestock hectare, by census area, 2025.* [Interactive](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/stocking-intensity/index.html) · [Vega-Lite spec](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/stocking-intensity/charts/areas-strip.vl.json)

## How we know

The notebook ran **11 cross-checks**, every one passed; the build refuses to publish a notebook whose numbers disagree with the source. A sample:

| check | got | expected | rule |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| livestock hectares per department: cube = CSV (largest difference, ha) | 0 | 0 | exactly |
| cattle per department: cube = CSV (largest difference, heads) | 0 | 0 | exactly |
| national livestock hectares, millions | 14.32 | 14.32 | within ±0.005 |
| national density, cattle per livestock ha | 0.856 | 0.856 | within ±0.0005 |
| San José density | 1.67 | 1.67 | within ±0.005 |
| all 19 densities = the cube's derived metric (largest gap) | 0 | 0 | within ±1e-06 |

Data: MGAP/SNIG DICOSE sworn declarations 2024 and 2025 (graph `uruguay-cows`), via SPARQL and MCP on the demo's own endpoint.

## The notebook

- Read it: [https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/stocking-intensity/index.html](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/stocking-intensity/index.html)
- Download: [stocking-intensity.ipynb](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/stocking-intensity/stocking-intensity.ipynb) (also in this workspace: file [`ipynb-stocking-intensity`](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/stocking-intensity/stocking-intensity.ipynb) in *Notebook files*)
- For agents: [index.md](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/notebooks/stocking-intensity/index.md)

Reading path: previous: [*Breeders in the east, finishers in the west*](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/notebook-herd-structure/index.md); next: [*One year on, 2024 to 2025*](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/notebook-year-over-year/index.md). The whole path: [`reading-path`](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/reading-path/index.md).

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## Connected (the graph's wires)

- Previous in the reading path: [Breeders in the east, finishers in the west](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/notebook-herd-structure/index.md)
- Next in the reading path: [One year on, 2024 to 2025](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/notebook-year-over-year/index.md)
- Related: [Artigas](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-artigas/index.md), [Canelones](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-canelones/index.md), [San José](https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/department-san-jose/index.md)

---

This document is CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), credit "cow-tools, Sophia Labs"; the data it describes keeps its own licence (Uruguay's open-data licence).

The cow-tools guide, Notebooks: https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/notebook-stocking-intensity/ (this page for people) · the whole guide: https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/guide/index.md · in Sophia: the graph `cow-tools-guide`, document `notebook-stocking-intensity` (MCP `read_document` at https://cow-tools.sophia-labs.com/mcp). CC BY 4.0, credit "cow-tools, Sophia Labs".