In Uruguay beef cattle production is the main source of income in 24848 farms, covering an area of 11.5 million hectares, being 55% of those farms classified as family. The main productive orientation in family farming is cattle breeding, based on natural grasslands. This work is part of the extension and development project "Improving the sustainability of family farming", carried out by the National Institute of Agriculture Research and Plan Agropecuario of Uruguay with AgResearch of New Zealand, between 2014 and 2017.

In Uruguay, during the last decades the number of farms has decreased significantly being the family farms the most affected ones. Between 2000 and 2011, 21% of the farms disappeared.

INTRODUCTION. Animal production system based on rangeland are very complex being its management closely related to the functioning of the ecosystem in which it is supoorted. For assessing the environmental impact of livestock management many variables need to be considered, making difficult and expensive to obtain a comprehensive overview of the ecosystem state and evolution. Therefore a qualitative and quantitative assessment tool was developed in order to evaluate the integrity of the ecosystem under productive use that may be applied in a simple and practical process.