Over the past two decades, an agricultural revolution has occurred in the Brazilian Amazon. Regions within the Amazon have quickly emerged as significant producers of grains and oilseeds, and they now provide consumers across the world with vegetable oils and animal feeds vital to distant economies. Despite the fact that beef production remains the primary driver of Amazonian deforestation, questions have emerged about the potential environmental impact associated with the expansion of large-scale agriculture in the region. This doctoral dissertation research project will address this issue and considers the impact of soybean production on regional forest cover. The doctoral student will focus the project on two principal questions: (1) By what mechanism does intensification at the intensive margin (with soybean production) influence the expansion of less intensive production strategies, such as ranching? (2) To what extent is pasture-led forest loss linked to encroachment by more intensive agricultural production on existing pastures? By answering these questions, the student will seek to ascertain how much Amazonian deforestation is caused by soybean farming, both from direct encroachments into forest and by virtue of compensatory pasture expansion following displacement by soybeans. He will employ a conceptual framework based on an adaptation of Thunian rent theory and considers the cascading spatial effects that emerge as land uses expand on one another, specifically the "pushing" of soybean farming against existing pastures. He will use a spatial-temporal regression model to test the relationship between regional expansion of soybean production and increases in cattle populations at distant locations. His statistical work will be complemented by interviews with producers' organizations in order to ascertain the destination of displaced ranchers, to understand production shifts associated with changes in ownership, and to gain greater behavioral insight into land-use dynamics. The project intends to fully comprehend the linkage between the expansion of soybean production and forest loss attributable to clearings for new pastures.
This project will provide a better understand of the factors affecting Amazonian forest loss. It will consider the role of soybeans as an underlying factor of pasture-led deforestation, and it will provide new information and insights regarding the mechanisms through which this occurs. In so doing, the project will bring to light linkages between soybean and cattle that have until now gone largely unseen, hidden by the regional land-use system. Project results will be useful for policy makers, managers, and members of the public who are attempting to strike a balance between regional economic demands and the preservation of the forest cover. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career. This project will be supported based on the joint recommendation of the NSF Geography and Spatial Sciences Program and the Americas Program in the NSF Office of International Science and Engineering.
In the Brazilian Amazon, tropical forest loss has been historically linked to the expansion of cattle production. In the past decade however, another factor, namely the growth of soybean production in the region, has been identified as an emerging driver of Amazon forest loss. In the Amazon, agriculture expansion affects the forest both directly, via direct encroachments into the forest and the conversion of forest to croplands, and indirectly, through the displacement of established pastures. This project focused on the indirect impacts of agriculture expansion, and sought to both clarify the conceptual underpinnings of the process and provide initial estimations of their magnitude. Field work associated with this research suggests that the migration of ranchers and farmers, spurred by appreciating property values and increased access to new lands, has played an important role in land cover and land use change in the Amazon. This research documented evidence of this so-called displacement effect, where existing operations are relocated to new frontiers with former land managers; for soybean farmers, this has meant the dispelling of producers to emerging agricultural districts in the states of Maranhão, Pará, and Tocantins; for ranchers, to the growing cattle pastures in western Pará. Evidently, farmers and ranchers decide not only what to produce, but where to produce, and will decide to relocate or reallocate their land based on a prevailing suite of local and distant economic conditions. Disparate land values for productive crop and pasturelands draws skilled land managers into new regions. Because the expansion of crop production (and rents for soybean production in particular) has propelled the appreciation of land in areas peripheral to current centers of crop production, growth in the sector has led to the displacement of former cattle operations, some of which were relocated to the region’s cattle frontiers. The second major objective of this project was to provide a broader estimate of the indirect impacts of agricultural expansion. Preliminary models suggested that deforestation in the forest frontiers of the basin is strongly related to soy expansion in its settled agricultural areas to the south and east. Three models were tested. Results in terms of average elasticities are .6% (regression: ordinary least squares, OLS), 1.2% (regression: fixed-effects without time lag for soy, FE1), and 4% (regression: fixed-effects with time lag for soy, FE2), depending on the model. If one were to use base their estimates of the second fixed effects model, it might be concluded that a 1 percent reduction in soy field expansion in settled agricultural areas would yield a 4 percent decrease in frontier deforestation. These results can be translated into absolute measures as follows. Between 2003 and 2008, soy expanded by 39,100 km² in basin agricultural areas, mostly in Mato Grosso. A drop in this amount by 10 percent (3,910 km²) would have led to a reduction in deforestation of 4,061 km² by the OLS model, 10,963 km² by the FE1 model, and 26,039 km² by the FE2 model (Figure 2). The measured ILUC impact is greater for the fixed effects, panel estimations, preferred in the present setting given their ability to control for unobserved and unmeasured time constant deforestation drivers. Such control is quite powerful, and eliminates the need for explicitly including variables that do not change over the times period, such as market accessibility associated with the road system, soils, and so on. The findings reveal substantial impact, amplified in magnitude beyond a one-to-one replacement of new for old pastures, probably resulting from the disproportionate appreciation of land in soy regions in comparison to the frontier. In addition to the abovementioned research findings, this award has led to the near-completion of Co-PI Richards’s Ph.D. studies, which are expected to be completed in May or Summer 2012. Richards also will complete an MS degree in Agriculture, Resource, and Food Economics as part of his graduate studies.
