LINCOLN, Neb. – Developing countries around the world face a challenge facing economic expansion as opposed to protecting the environment. As they develop their agricultural production, they convert forests into farmland and pastures. But large-scale logging weakens the world’s ability to spare it further deterioration from climate and biodiversity loss.
Brazil is a key example. The country is home to the world’s largest rainforest domain: approximately 1. 2 million square miles, a domain more than 16 times the length of Nebraska. The vast expanses of Amazon rainforest that, when switched to agriculture, release a massive amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, exacerbating climate change.
Increasing agricultural production is a national priority for Brazil, the world’s largest soybean exporter. Since the 1990s, agricultural encroachment has eroded giant slots of the country’s rainforest. From 2015 to 2019, the Amazon basin accounted for one-third of the land handed over to Brazilian Soy Expansion.
A four-year study recently published by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and its study partners in Brazil identifies a way forward that would allow Brazil to develop its agricultural sector while preserving the rainforest. The scientists’ recommendations are widely applicable to other emerging countries facing a similar challenge.
“In the current context of high cereal costs and disruptions in food sources, it is critical that primary crop-producing countries reconsider their possibilities to produce more on existing cropland,” the authors wrote in a paper published Oct. 10 in the journal Nature. Sustainability”. Without a focus on intensifying agricultural production in the existing agricultural area, along with strong establishments and policies that prevent deforestation in frontier agricultural areas, it would be difficult to protect the planet’s last bastions of forests and biodiversity while being susceptible to the economy. conditions. aspirations of countries to develop.
Since 2000, moratoriums and incentives have been used to curb deforestation in Brazil. However, the sharp rise in commodity costs and political pressure from the combined effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have put the Amazon rainforest at greater risk. threat. If existing trends continue, Brazil will convert about 57 million acres to soybean production over the next 15 years, with about a quarter of the expansion on ecologically sensitive lands such as rainforest and savannah.
However, banning farmland expansion would cost Brazil around $447 billion in lost economic opportunities by 2035.
PRODUCTION INTENSIFICATION
The study led by Patricio Grassini, Sunkist Professor Emeritus of Agronomy and Associate Professor in the Nebraska Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, shows how it would be possible for Brazil to increase agricultural production without converting more tropical forests and savannas into crops. With a conscientiously controlled strategy to increase production on the existing acreage, the country can increase its annual soybean production by 36% until 2035 while reducing greenhouse fuel emissions by 58% compared to existing trends.
Grassini and his co-authors describe a triple “intensification” that demands:
> Significant increase in soybean crop yields.
> Growing corn in soybean fields in some areas.
> Raise more cattle on smaller pastures to free up more land for soybeans.
Brazil’s tropical and subtropical climates make it imaginable to grow two crops on the same land during the development season in peak domains, Grassini said. In addition, “livestock production is massive in Brazil,” he said, “and our study shows that there is a great opportunity for Brazil to build production systems based on cattle ranching and, in doing so, lose some of the dominance used lately. for animal production and use that land to produce more soybeans.
Detailed modeling of the task indicates that by 2035, the strategy could increase Brazil’s soybean production by 36%. At the same time, Grassini said, Brazil could simply “completely deforest and necessarily decrease the amount of carbon dioxide equivalents released into the atmosphere. “, helping to mitigate climate change. “
“This technique strengthens agriculture, while protecting fragile ecosystems that are vital to the climate replaces mitigation and biodiversity conservation,” he said.
To the extent that yields can increase on existing Brazilian farmland, the scientists looked at soybean production in 4 key regions: the Pampas and Atlantic Forest regions along the Atlantic coast, where soybean cultivation has been going on for about 50 years. and the Amazon and Cerrado regions of Brazil’s interior, where soybean production began after the early twenty-first century. the world’s leading database of high-quality agronomic data, covering more than 15 primary food crops in more than 75 countries.
“It appears that it is possible to produce more on existing farmland,” the scientists wrote, “this study brings real answers to the table and will have a major impact on helping Brazil produce more while protecting the environment. “
Grassini warned that the good fortune of dual goals of agricultural expansion and forest cover will require strong institutions, adequate policies and enforcement to ensure that those productivity gains translate well into forest conservation. However, the intensification technique can achieve a moderate balance between agricultural production and the coverage of fragile ecosystems.
Grassini’s team calculated 3 scenarios in the 4 key regions: “business as usual”, where existing trends would continue; “non-expansion of cultivated land”, where the conversion of more land would be prohibited; and “intensification”, where measures would be taken to increase yields, inspire secondary crops and concentrate the production of farm animals. They concluded that the intensification strategy would allow Brazil to reach 85% of the projected gross source of income from soybeans and secondary production. maize cultivation, compared to existing trends, while reducing global warming by 58%.
The four-year assignment involved collaboration between the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Brazilian universities, adding the University of Sao Paulo, the Federal University of Santa Maria and the University of Goiás, as well as Embrapa, the leading agricultural studies organization in Brasil. CoAndrade, former assistant professors of agronomy and horticulture studies in Nebraska. State Research Foundation and the Nebraska Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources Office of Global Engagement through the FAPESP-UNL SPRINT Program.
Fabio R. Marin, a Brazilian scientist who was the lead author of the paper with Brazilian scientist Alencar J. Zanon, earned money from the Fulbright program for a six-month stay in Nebraska.