Disentangling the contribution of cattle ranching to deforestation in the brazilian Amazon

• Autor(a) principal: Marcus Vinicius de Freitas Silveira
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações do INPE
• Texto Completo: http://urlib.net/sid.inpe.br/mtc-m21c/2021/02.13.01.10

Deforestation rates have been rising in the Brazilian Amazon since 2013 and a long-term planning to reduce trends requires an in-depth understanding of the major drivers of land use change in the region, such as cattle ranching. However, there is a lack of large-scale evidence about how the technological and socioeconomic conditions in which cattle ranching is practiced influence on deforestation. This study assessed the contribution of different cattle ranching systems to deforestation in the Brazilian Legal Amazon from 2017 to 2019, and compared their trends in land use change and stocking rate across time intervals within the period from 2000 to 2019. Farming statistics were collected at the municipal level from Brazils agricultural census of 2017. Municipalities with a predominance of cattle ranching farms were divided into four farming system groups, according to pairwise combinations of higher/lower than average levels of adoption of management practices and capital investment among farms. The highest deforestation rates were found for municipalities with a lower adoption of both management practices and capital investment. These municipalities also had a significantly lower density of slaughterhouses, and presented greater trends in forest loss since the 2008-2012 period compared to municipalities in the two farming system groups with a higher adoption of management practices. The proportion of municipalities with significant increases in stocking rate without significant increases in pasture area started to rise in all farming systems since the 2008-2012 period, but still accounted for only 21% of total municipalities during the 2012-2019 period. Agrarian settlements were the land tenure category with the highest likelihood for deforestation in all farming systems. Policies aiming to prevent deforestation could consider increasing the adoption of management practices among ranchers as one of the major strategies.