![]() Across panels, regions are represented with different colours: blue (Amazon), orange (Cerrado), green (Atlantic Forest) and red (Pampa). The inset shows the soybean area distribution 64. The size of the pie chart in each region is proportional to the share of national soybean production. c, Contribution of cropland expansion and yield improvement to soybean production increase in each region. Values indicate the annual rate of yield improvement in each region and for Brazil. Shown in b is the annual rate of yield improvement for each region during 2007–2019, with shadow bands representing the 95% confidence intervals estimated for the fitted linear regression models. The pie charts shown in a indicate the percentage of soybean expansion occurring in each biome, while the total increase in soybean area in each period is shown next to the pie charts. Slower yield improvement in the Cerrado and the Amazon could be attributed to the shorter history of soybean production in these regions, where large-scale soybean production started in the early 2000s, compared with the historical soybean-producing region in southern Brazil, where soybean was introduced 50 years ago.Ī, b, Trends in soybean area and average yield. Yield improvement has been slower in the Cerrado and the Amazon than in other regions (Fig. Of special concern for biodiversity and climate change is the increase of soybean expansion in the Amazon, which accounted for one third of the land converted for soybean production in Brazil between 20, with half of soybean expansion in this region occurring at the expense of tropical rainforest 16. 1 and 2, Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary Section 1). Soybean area has expanded at 1.4 Mha per year during the recent 2007–2019 period, driven by the availability of suitable soils for crop production and favourable weather in the Amazon and the Cerrado, which allow farmers to achieve high and stable soybean yields and to cultivate an additional maize crop (hereafter referred to as second-crop maize) in the same cropping season (Fig. In contrast, large tracts of pristine forest and savannah remain in the Cerrado and especially the Amazon. The first two regions experienced a massive process of land conversion for agriculture many decades ago (1970s–1990s), and only a small portion of the native vegetation now remains. Soybean area is concentrated in four regions: the Pampa, the Atlantic Forest, the Cerrado and the Amazon (Fig. We discuss the resultant implications for policymakers and priorities in agricultural research and development (AR&D) programmes to foster agricultural intensification and protection of fragile ecosystems. To evaluate the potential of achieving both outcomes, we combined crop modelling and spatial analysis to investigate different scenarios of intensification and land use change and associated impacts on production, land conversion and climate change. Here we investigated the degree to which intensification (that is, increasing the productivity of existing agricultural areas) could serve as a means of enabling Brazil to simultaneously reconcile production and environmental goals. At question is whether these measures alone will be sufficient to prevent the conversion of fragile ecosystems in a context of high grain prices and governments seeking economic growth via increased agricultural output. During subsequent years (2005–2015), Brazil has made tangible progress in reducing deforestation rates via moratoriums and incentive programmes funded by foreign countries 14, 15. Soybean production drove massive deforestation during the late 1990s and early 2000s 12, 13. At the same time, Brazil is the main soybean-exporting country, accounting for ca. Of special relevance are the vast areas of rainforests located in the Amazon basin, summing to 330 Mha. These events are critically important for developing countries with vast tracts of land suitable for farming that are currently covered with fragile ecosystems such as rainforests and savannahs, because they can trigger massive land conversion in a relatively short period, leading to biodiversity loss and global warming 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.īrazil hosts one of the largest pools of biodiversity in the world, with 516 Mha of forests and savannahs 10. The second is a strong desire of national governments to quickly recover from the negative economic impact by making use of their countries’ comparative advantages 2. One is a sharp increase in crop commodity prices, which have nearly doubled compared with pre-pandemic levels 1. The COVID-19 pandemic, together with the war in Ukraine, brought two consequences that can have massive impacts on developing countries that rely on commodity crops as a main source of income. ![]()
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