Will intensification of beef production deliver conservation outcomes in the Brazilian Amazon?

Merry, Frank; Soares‐Filho, Britaldo

doi:10.1525/elementa.224

Cited by 38 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…First, our findings show a continuous increase in productivity of cattle production, but still with low rates of efficiency while other studies have emphasized the need for shorter-term and sharper increases in the efficiency of the cattle pasture sector overall (Strassburg et al, 2014. Merry and Soares-Filho (2017) went further by suggesting that intensification of the cattle-beef system in Brazil may not deliver sustainability goals. They argued that cattle ranching will intensify as a result of conservation investments rather than intensifying in order to produce conservation results and that the new intensive system will continue to require large natural resource inputs, government subsidies, and be plagued by social and conservation problems.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 51%

Asymmetries of cattle and crop productivity and efficiency during Brazil’s agricultural expansion from 1975 to 2006

Sparovek

Guidotti²,

Pinto³

et al. 2018

Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene

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Brazil has global importance for food production and conservation of natural resources. The country has plans to increase yields and commitments to decrease deforestation that require higher productivity. Plans and policies for the growth of Brazilian agriculture, however, have been made without an integrated analysis of the harvest and not supported by a universal metric regarding its efficiency. Applying methods to model flows of energy and matter along food supply chains for agricultural production from 1975 to 2006, we found that crop and cattle harvests and their productivity have increased during the last four decades in consolidated and deforestation frontier regions. Yet in 2006, crop protein production was 20 times larger than cattle protein, using an area 2.6 times smaller than pastures. Crop protein productivity was 0.25 ton.ha -1 with emissions of 2 ton GHG per ton of protein, while cattle productivity was 0.01 ton. ha -1 with emissions of 283 ton GHG per ton of protein. From 1975 to 2006, the portion of crop protein and energy going to feed increased while the portion going to direct human consumption decreased. Our findings suggest that more efficient food systems would be achieved by a combination of intensification of cattle systems, optimization of feed-meat systems and an increase in the share of the consumption of crops as a source of protein. We suggest an initial road map to the expansion of the cultivated area and intensification of agriculture for zero deforestation, efficient and sustainable land use and food systems where cattle pasture intensification is a transition that will last until the expansion of crops replace all pasture present on suitable arable land. During this transition, pasture area will decrease until it is limited only to marginal non-arable lands. Such change could be achieved by a robust strategy that combines penalties and incentives and prevents the risks of a rebound effect for the intensification of agriculture.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 51%

Asymmetries of cattle and crop productivity and efficiency during Brazil’s agricultural expansion from 1975 to 2006

Sparovek

Guidotti²,

Pinto³

et al. 2018

Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene

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“…While much work on agriculture-environment trade-offs has focused on how yield increases might spare forests from conversion (e.g., Burney et al 2010;Tilman et al 2011;Stevenson et al 2013;Cohn et al 2014), our results suggest that the causality can run both ways. At least in areas with large yield gaps and where high-yielding technologies are readily available (as in Brazilian cattle ranching), policies that induce land scarcity may induce intensification (Kaimowitz and Angelsen 2008;Merry and Soares-Filho 2017;Schwerhoff and Wehkamp 2018). We caution, however, that efforts to pair forest conservation and the implementation of high-yielding farming practices are likely to be more successful than any one intervention alone (Phalan et al 2016).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Agricultural Productivity and Forest Conservation: Evidence from the Brazilian Amazon

Koch

Ermgassen

Wehkamp

et al. 2019

American J Agri Economics

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A mix of public policy and market interventions in the mid‐2000s led to historic reductions in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The collateral impact of these forest conservation policies on agricultural production is still poorly understood, though evidence is sorely needed given the economic importance of agriculture in Brazil and many other forest‐rich countries. We construct a ten‐year panel dataset for agriculture and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon (2004–2014), and use two complementary difference‐in‐difference strategies to estimate the causal effect of one of Brazil's flagship anti‐deforestation strategies, the Priority List (Municípios Prioritários), on agricultural production and productivity in three sectors: beef, dairy, and crop production. We find no evidence for trade‐offs between agriculture and forest conservation. Rather, reductions in deforestation in priority municipalities were paired with increases in cattle production and productivity (cattle/hectare), consistent with a model where policy‐induced decreases in the value of clearing new land cause credit‐constrained farmers to shift investments from deforestation to capital investments in farming. The policy had no consistent effect on dairy or crop production. Our results suggest that in regions with large yield gaps and where technologies for increasing yields are readily available, efforts to constrain agricultural expansion through improved forest conservation policies may induce intensification.

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“…These conflicts are often mediated by ideas of primitivism about historical land uses which demonise non-monocrop systems as archaic. Anti-fire discourses are adopted by powerful agribusiness landowners interested in denigrating fire use as part of a political narrative contesting Indigenous and traditional people's rights to land (Eloy et al, 2016;Welch et al, 2013), even as most of the agribusiness holdings rely on a deforestation phase (Merry & Soares-Filho, 2017;Oliveira & Hecht, 2016).…”

Section: Power and Fire Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

Firing up: Policy, politics and polemics under new and old burning regimes

Eloy

Hecht

Steward

et al. 2019

Geographical Journal

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Changing fire regimes in the context of climate change call for new understandings of their diversity, use, policies, practices and politics. While catastrophic fires are redoubling calls for suppression, new political ecologies debate fire prohibition politics and emphasise understanding and incorporating local knowledge into management decisions. Latin American countries are characterised by strong regional tensions associated with environmental policies, agriculture and infrastructure development that often compete with local livelihoods, traditional management and a range of resource use practices. Landscape knowledge systems that inform customary use, access and resource interventions have become a new node of contestation; these are added to the perennial question of land rights, especially as carbon politics and other environmental services become more important in the structuring of autonomy over land uses. This themed section presents research conducted in different countries and biomes in Latin America and explores the historical and current tensions around the development of the science of burning by local populations. Research outlines the contradictions and tensions between fire control policies and rural livelihoods, and the emergent political factors and ideologies that inherent in fire conflicts and could help shape solutions. Our four case studies in different regions of south America (Amazon, Cerrado, Chiquitana), explore the production, application and circulation of knowledge about fire and its consequences using an array of methods: classical descriptive models, analytics from political ecology, and the complex arena of science and technology studies. The latter help us to understand the conflictual dynamics associated with “new fire management,” which relies on more technological means of fire control as well as legislation, payments, and new governmentalities to transform traditional practices. Overall, the papers place fire management in its new active political and ecological framing, namely at the heart of current development debates in the Latin American tropics.

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Will intensification of beef production deliver conservation outcomes in the Brazilian Amazon?

Cited by 38 publications

References 36 publications

Asymmetries of cattle and crop productivity and efficiency during Brazil’s agricultural expansion from 1975 to 2006

Asymmetries of cattle and crop productivity and efficiency during Brazil’s agricultural expansion from 1975 to 2006

Agricultural Productivity and Forest Conservation: Evidence from the Brazilian Amazon

Firing up: Policy, politics and polemics under new and old burning regimes

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