Spatially complex land change: the indirect effect of Brazil's agricultural sector on land use in Amazonia
Open accessAbstract
Soybean farming has brought economic development to parts of South America, as well as environmental hopes and concerns. A substantial hope resides in the decoupling of Brazil's agricultural sector from deforestation in the Amazon region, in which case expansive agriculture need not imply forest degradation. However, concerns have also been voiced about the potential indirect effects of agriculture. This article addresses these indirect effects forthe case of the Brazilian Amazon since 2002. Our work finds that as much as thirty-two percent of deforestation, or the loss of more than 30,000 km 2 of Amazon forest, is attributable, indirectly, to Brazil's soybean sector. However, we also observe that the magnitude of the indirect impact of the agriculture sector on forest loss in the Amazon has declined markedly since 2006. We also find a shift in the underlying causes of indirect land use change in the Amazon, and suggest that land appreciation in agricultural regions has supplanted farm expansions as a source of indirect land use change. Our results are broadly congruent with recent work recognizing the success of policy changes in mitigating the impact of soybean expansion on forest loss in the Amazon. However, they also caution that the soybean sector may continue to incentivize land clearings through its impact on regional land markets.
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The soybean agricultural frontier has now reached the Cerrado areas of MATOPIBA (Maranhão, Tocantins, Piaui, Bahia states).
“the soybean agricultural frontier has now reached the Cerrado areas of MATOPIBA (i.e.Maranhão, Tocantins, Piaui, Bahia states) (Eloy et al., 2015, Macedo et al., 2012and Richards et al., 2014)”
From Transition in environmental governance in the Brazilian Amazon: emergence of a new pattern of socio-economic development and deforestation (2016) · cites this paper as Richards et al., 2014
The Introduction discusses soybean expansion in Brazil and the Amazon, but does not locate the frontier in MATOPIBA (page unavailable). Section 4.2 mentions Tocantins and Maranhão only when defining counties excluded from the deforestation sample. Searches for MATOPIBA, Cerrado, and the four states did not find a passage saying that the soybean frontier had reached those areas. (LLM, conf=0.72)
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Cites
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Reducing the land use of EU pork production: Where there’s swill, there’s a way
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Land inequality and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon
Sant'anna, A. A. (2017) · Environment and Development Economics · doi:10.1017/s1355770x1600022x · Cited by 39 · see citing works
- Authors
- Richards, P. D., Walker, R. T., & Arima, E. Y.
- Affiliations
- Brown University (US)
- University of Florida (US)
- Corresponding author
- Richards, Peter D.
- Venue
- Global Environmental Change
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2014-11
- Volume
- 29
- Pages
- 1-9
- ISSN
- 0959-3780 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4258392
- OpenAlex
- W2165114211
- Cited by
- 172
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 32 · 2018: 17 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 13 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 9.35
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Global Environmental Change (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Inter-American Foundation Grass Roots Fellowship
- The Mellon Foundation for International Study
- North American Regional Science Association Ben Stevens Fellowship
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Land Use and Ecosystem Services
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › General Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development
- Keywords
- indirect land use change, soybean production, deforestation, Brazilian Amazon, agricultural expansion, land appreciation, land market, forest loss, agricultural policy, land use change
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