Rapid expansion of sugarcane crop for biofuels and influence on food production in the first producing region of Brazil

Defante, Lilliane Renata; Vilpoux, Olivier François; Sauer, Leandro

doi:10.1016/j.foodpol.2018.06.005

Cited by 29 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Furthermore, recent studies in Brazil have shown that sugarcane improves food security and sugarcane growers, given the higher socio-economic standards, have higher food crop production, because they reveal higher spending compared to the control in terms of food crop inputs (Defante et al, 2018;Herrmann et al, 2018).…”

Section: Food Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

What are the Impacts of Sugarcane Production on Ecosystem Services? A Review

Chami¹,

Daccache²,

Moujabber³

2020

Preprint

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Since the 1950s sugarcane production has grown rapidly from less than 0.5 billion tonnes in the late 50s to reach over 1.9 billion tonnes in 2012 on about 27 million hectares of agricultural land. This expansion has been boosted by the high demand for bioethanol promoted as a sustainable bioenergy source which accounted in 2010 for the biggest share of the global biofuel market. Despite its benefits, the scientific debate on sugar is growing especially that counterarguments are so many, including negative impacts on different interacting ecosystems and human well-being, e.g. bigger stress on land and water resources, environmental externalities on air, a harmful impact on the biodiversity and endemic species, negative environmental externalities, health, and socio-economic aspects. This paper provides a narrative systematic review (SR) of the impacts of sugarcane production on these different ecosystems employing the ecosystem services framework for its acceptance by policy-makers. The references included for the SR were 163 and results showed that the majority of the studies are from Brazil, Australia, South Africa and the USA (≈ 75% of the literature), most of them were from peer-reviewed journals (85%), and most of the case studies adopted a quantitative research approach (93%). The literature assessed showed that sugarcane, like all agro-systems, depends on the practices and techniques to transform negative impacts into positive externalities on ecosystems and human well-being. However, the literature studied failed to include the inter-linkage in sugarcane production impacts’ and therefore to evaluate the related ecosystem services with respect to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) framework to account for existing trade-offs. Therefore, the findings are addressed to the scientific community and decision-maker for an intensification of interdisciplinary and integrated research based on the MA framework to cover all ecosystem services, for sustainable development of the sugarcane sector.

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Section: Food Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

What are the Impacts of Sugarcane Production on Ecosystem Services? A Review

Chami¹,

Daccache²,

Moujabber³

2020

Preprint

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“…First, food and biofuel production has been the concern of politicallydominant classes and corporate interests taking over smallholdings (Hall et al, 2015;Byerlee et al, 2017). This is best exemplified by the advance of sugar cane growing in Brazil for both food and biofuel production (Defante et al, 2018). The second category covers between 450 and 1.7 billion ha worldwide, based on estimates from the World Bank.…”

Section: Land Grabs In the 21st Centurymentioning

confidence: 99%

New frontiers in agricultural geography: transformations, food security, land grabs and climate change

Robinson

2018

BAGE

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Agriculture as a central focus of study featured prominently at several different times in the historical development of human geography, but it has also been an important contributor to the disciplinary transformation that has occurred since 1970. This essay outlines this more recent history, arguing that agricultural geography developed its own concepts and concerns, paralleling some of those within the wider discipline. It illustrates how in the past two decades attempts to examine changes occurring across the breadth of the agri-food system (from supply, to production, to consumption) have brought about a more issues-focused agricultural geography. There is discussion of the use of broad overarching concepts, which have conceived of changes to agriculture and the agri-food system in terms of episodic developments. This has seen recognition of different food regimes, acknowledging possible transitions from productivism to post-productivism to multifunctionality and perhaps neo-productivism. Having discussed these concepts, drawing extensively upon literature written in English, the essay then focuses on selected major problems or key issues to which agriciultural geographers are currently contributing new insights, namely the closely related topics of food security, land grabs and adaptations to climate change.

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“…The country is an important global food supplier, and it is estimated that one out of four agribusiness products in circulation around the world came from Brazil [13]. Despite the concern of biofuel production, sugarcane occupies only 8.9 million hectares of arable land [14], and the majority is used for sugar production rather than ethanol.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time Series Prediction with Artificial Neural Networks: An Analysis Using Brazilian Soybean Production

et al. 2020

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Food production to meet human demand has been a challenge to society. Nowadays, one of the main sources of feeding is soybean. Considering agriculture food crops, soybean is sixth by production volume and the fourth by both production area and economic value. The grain can be used directly to human consumption, but it is highly used as a source of protein for animal production that corresponds 75% of the total, or as oil and derived food products. Brazil and the US are the most important players responsible for more than 70% of world production. Therefore, a reliable forecasting is essential for decision-makers to plan adequate policies to this important commodity and to establish the necessary logistical resources. In this sense, this study aims to predict soybean harvest area, yield, and production using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and compare with classical methods of Time Series Analysis. To this end, we collected data from a time series (1961–2016) regarding soybean production in Brazil. The results reveal that ANN is the best approach to predict soybean harvest area and production while classical linear function remains more effective to predict soybean yield. Moreover, ANN presents as a reliable model to predict time series and can help the stakeholders to anticipate the world soybean offer.

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Rapid expansion of sugarcane crop for biofuels and influence on food production in the first producing region of Brazil

Cited by 29 publications

References 19 publications

What are the Impacts of Sugarcane Production on Ecosystem Services? A Review

What are the Impacts of Sugarcane Production on Ecosystem Services? A Review

New frontiers in agricultural geography: transformations, food security, land grabs and climate change

Time Series Prediction with Artificial Neural Networks: An Analysis Using Brazilian Soybean Production

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