IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/agisys/v110y2012icp173-177.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Land-saving approaches and beef production growth in Brazil

Author

Listed:
  • Martha, Geraldo B.
  • Alves, Eliseu
  • Contini, Elisio

Abstract

Increased food production can be achieved by incorporating more land into the productive process, by increasing productivity in already opened areas or by a combination of both strategies. By allowing a fraction of current pasture area to accommodate the expansion of food and biofuel crops intensification of existing pastoral systems is a strategy to avoid further loss of native vegetation. However, there is a common misperception that the path of growth of the Brazilian beef production has been primarily based on the expansion of extensive pastures. Empirical evidence presented in this article shows that whilst this was the case for the 1950–1975 period, the pattern of cattle production in Brazil has changed profoundly since then. During the 1950–2006 period productivity gains explained 79% of the growth in beef production in Brazil and supported a land-saving effect of 525 million hectares. Therefore, without this land-saving effect an additional pasture area that is 25% higher than the Amazon biome in Brazil would be needed to meet current levels of Brazilian beef production.

Suggested Citation

  • Martha, Geraldo B. & Alves, Eliseu & Contini, Elisio, 2012. "Land-saving approaches and beef production growth in Brazil," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 173-177.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:agisys:v:110:y:2012:i:c:p:173-177
    DOI: 10.1016/j.agsy.2012.03.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X12000340
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.agsy.2012.03.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bernardo Mueller, 1997. "Property Rights and the Evolution of a Frontier," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 73(1), pages 42-57.
    2. Britaldo Silveira Soares-Filho & Daniel Curtis Nepstad & Lisa M. Curran & Gustavo Coutinho Cerqueira & Ricardo Alexandrino Garcia & Claudia Azevedo Ramos & Eliane Voll & Alice McDonald & Paul Lefebvre, 2006. "Modelling conservation in the Amazon basin," Nature, Nature, vol. 440(7083), pages 520-523, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sébastien Marchand, 2011. "Technical Efficiency, Farm Size and Tropical Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazonian Forest," Working Papers halshs-00552981, HAL.
    2. Claudia Suzanne Marie Nathalie Vitel & Gabriel Cardoso Carrero & Mariano Colini Cenamo & Maya Leroy & Paulo Mauricio Lima A. Graça & Philip Martin Fearnside, 2013. "Land-use Change Modeling in a Brazilian Indigenous Reserve: Construction of a Reference Scenario for the Suruí REDD Project," Post-Print hal-01466513, HAL.
    3. Jose Manuel Ochoa-Quintero & Charlotte H. Chang & Toby A. Gardner & Mariluce Rezende Messias & William J. Sutherland & Fernanda A. C. Delben, 2017. "Habitat Loss on Rondon’s Marmoset Potential Distribution," Land, MDPI, vol. 6(1), pages 1-15, January.
    4. Gabriela Simonet & Julie Subervie & Driss Ezzine-De-Blas & Marina Cromberg & Amy Duchelle, 2015. "Paying smallholders not to cut down the amazon forest: impact evaluation of a REDD+ pilot project," Working Papers 1514, Chaire Economie du climat.
    5. José Gomis-Cebolla & Juan C. Jiménez-Muñoz & José A. Sobrino, 2016. "MODIS-Based Monthly LST Products over Amazonia under Different Cloud Mask Schemes," Data, MDPI, vol. 1(2), pages 1-10, July.
    6. Santos, Mário & Bastos, Rita & Cabral, João Alexandre, 2013. "Converting conventional ecological datasets in dynamic and dynamic spatially explicit simulations: Current advances and future applications of the Stochastic Dynamic Methodology (StDM)," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 258(C), pages 91-100.
    7. Franklin, Sergio L. & Pindyck, Robert S., 2018. "Tropical Forests, Tipping Points, and the Social Cost of Deforestation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 161-171.
    8. Bernardo F. T. Rudorff & Marcos Adami & Joel Risso & Daniel Alves De Aguiar & Bernardo Pires & Daniel Amaral & Leandro Fabiani & Izabel Cecarelli, 2012. "Remote Sensing Images to Detect Soy Plantations in the Amazon Biome—The Soy Moratorium Initiative," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 4(5), pages 1-15, May.
    9. De Oliveira Silva, Rafael & Barioni, Luis Gustavo & Queiroz Pellegrino, Giampaolo & Moran, Dominic, 2018. "The role of agricultural intensification in Brazil's Nationally Determined Contribution on emissions mitigation," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 102-112.
    10. Claudio Ferraz, 2015. "Explaining Agriculture Expansion and Deforestation: Evidence from the Brazilian Amazon – 1980/98," Discussion Papers 0106, Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada - IPEA.
    11. Kaushal, Kevin R. & Navrud, Ståle, 2018. "Global Biodiversity Costs of Climate Change. Improving the damage assessment of species loss in Integrated Assessment Models," Working Paper Series 4-2018, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, School of Economics and Business.
    12. Changjun Gu & Pei Zhao & Qiong Chen & Shicheng Li & Lanhui Li & Linshan Liu & Yili Zhang, 2020. "Forest Cover Change and the Effectiveness of Protected Areas in the Himalaya since 1998," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(15), pages 1-24, July.
    13. Carrero, Gabriel Cardoso & Walker, Robert Tovey & Simmons, Cynthia Suzanne & Fearnside, Philip Martin, 2022. "Land grabbing in the Brazilian Amazon: Stealing public land with government approval," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    14. Courage Kamusoko & Yukio Wada & Toru Furuya & Shunsuke Tomimura & Mitsuru Nasu & Khamma Homsysavath, 2013. "Simulating Future Forest Cover Changes in Pakxeng District, Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR): Implications for Sustainable Forest Management," Land, MDPI, vol. 2(1), pages 1-19, January.
    15. Edward Barbier & John Bugas, 2014. "Structural change, marginal land and economic development in Latin America and the Caribbean," Latin American Economic Review, Springer;Centro de Investigaciòn y Docencia Económica (CIDE), vol. 23(1), pages 1-29, December.
    16. Barbier, Edward B., 2020. "Long run agricultural land expansion, booms and busts," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    17. Iana Rufino & Slobodan Djordjević & Higor Costa de Brito & Priscila Barros Ramalho Alves, 2021. "Multi-Temporal Built-Up Grids of Brazilian Cities: How Trends and Dynamic Modelling Could Help on Resilience Challenges?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-21, January.
    18. Yoshito Takasaki, 2011. "Economic models of shifting cultivation: a review," Tsukuba Economics Working Papers 2011-006, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba.
    19. A.S. Duden & P.A. Verweij & A.P.C. Faaij & D. Baisero & C. Rondinini & F. van der Hilst, 2020. "Biodiversity Impacts of Increased Ethanol Production in Brazil," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-17, January.
    20. de Oliveira Barros, Erison Rosa & Oliveira de Andrade, Maurício & de Souza Júnior, Fernando Lourenço, 2022. "Time-space modeling of irregular occupations around Brazilian highways, based on static grids: Case study of BR-408," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:agisys:v:110:y:2012:i:c:p:173-177. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/agsy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.