Determinants for agricultural fertilizer use in Brazilian Amazon: a one-decade analysis

Abstract

This manuscript compares one decade of fertilizer use in Legal Amazon municipalities, determining the main factors that incentive the adoption of this technology. We gathered data from Brazilian Agricultural Census for both 2006 and 2017 and estimated a multinomial logit model (MLM) to differentiate classes of fertilizer use. Our results shows that cattle ranching and rural credit are negatively correlated with fertilizer use. Large agricultural commodities production, rural mechanization, and the use of limestone are factors that contribute widely to use of fertilizers. Diffusion of knowledge to farmers, wider access to rural policies, and the agricultural private sector incentives could contribute to spread the use of fertilizer throughout Amazon.