Explaining the persistence of low income and environmentally degrading land uses in the Brazilian Amazon

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Tropical forests continue to be plagued by the dual sustainability challenges of deforestation and rural poverty. We seek to understand why many of the farmers living in the Brazilian Amazon, home to the world's largest tropical agricultural-forest frontier, persist in agricultural activities associated with low incomes and high environmental damage. To answer this question, we assess the factors that shape the development and distribution of agricultural activities and farmer well-being in these frontiers. Our study utilizes a uniquely comprehensive social-ecological dataset from two regions in the eastern Brazilian Amazon and employs a novel conceptual framework that highlights the interdependencies between household attributes, agricultural activities, and well-being. We find that livestock production, which yields the lowest per hectare incomes, remains the most prevalent land use in remote areas, but many examples of high income fruit, horticulture, and staple crop production exist on small properties, particularly in peri-urban areas. The transition to more profitable land uses is limited by lagging supply chain infrastructure, social preferences, and the fact that income associated with land use activities is not a primary source of perceived life quality. Instead subjective well-being is more heavily influenced by the nonmonetary attributes of a rural lifestyle (safety, tranquility, community relations, etc.). We conclude that transitions away from low-income land uses in agricultural-forest frontiers of the Brazilian Amazon need not abandon a land-focused vision of development, but will require policies and programs that identify and discriminate households based on a broader set of household assets, cultural attributes, and aspirations than are traditionally applied. At a broader scale, access to distant markets for high value crops must be improved via investments in processing, storage, and marketing infrastructure.

Pathways for recent Cerrado soybean expansion: extending the soy moratorium and implementing integrated crop livestock systems with soybeans

“…The conditions under which ranchers may decide to adopt ICLS are complex. Cattle ranches are most often large properties (>300 ha) located far from towns, and are associated with having limited access to credit and machinery [74]. Access to machinery, in particular, correlates with whether cattle ranches use crop-pasture systems versus cattle alone [74].…”

“…Cattle ranches are most often large properties (>300 ha) located far from towns, and are associated with having limited access to credit and machinery [74]. Access to machinery, in particular, correlates with whether cattle ranches use crop-pasture systems versus cattle alone [74]. Some frontier regions face other socio-economic barriers to implementing ICLS systems, such as lack of technical and economic expertise, lack of quality labor, lack of credit access, high financial costs, being far from supply chain infrastructure, and the absence of business models that are applicable to small-scale farmers [42,43,73,75].…”

“…The financial benefits of ICLS may be insufficient to drive widespread adoption. For example, the perception that cattle ranching requires less labor than other more complex crop systems may work to dissuade those considering adoption in areas where labor is scarce, meanwhile, uncertain markets increase the appeal of acquiring low-risk savings in the form of cattle while enjoying the elevated social status associated with the profession [44,74,79].…”

Tradeoffs in the quest for climate smart agricultural intensification in Mato Grosso, Brazil

“…ICL, on the other hand, has greater impacts on reactive nitrogen, energy, and water per HDP than SOY, but is a major improvement to conventional cattle ranching, particularly under climate change. Moreover, by improving pasture productivity and farm income, it can help address persistent poverty and land degradation across much of the agricultural regions in the Amazon [6]. Thus, a mix of specialized crop pro-duction and integrated crop-livestock systems may be optimal to balance social and environmental concerns in the region.…”

“…This region contains a large share of the world's tropical forests, water and biodiversity, as well as untapped poten-tial for agricultural production through intensification [1,2], thus having direct implications for the world's climate and food security [3]. Despite recent significant growth in the productivity of livestock production systems in Brazil, the greatest environmental challenge in the Amazon and Cerrado is the continued prevalence of low productivity cattle ranching, linked to high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, land cover change, land abandonment, and low farm incomes [4][5][6]. Climate change adds complexity to these issues; uncertainty exists as to whether it will exacerbate low pasture productivity (e.g.…”