Abstract
Brazil is a megadiversity country with more tropical forest than any other, and is a leading agricultural producer. The technical potential to reconcile these roles by concentrating agriculture on existing farmland and sparing land for nature is well-established, but the spatial overlap of this potential with conservation priorities and institutional constraints remains poorly understood. We mapped conservation priorities, food production potential and socio-economic variables likely to influence the success of land sparing. Pasture occupies 70% of agricultural land but contributes ≤11% of the domestic food supply. Increasing yields on pasture would add little to Brazil’s food supply but – if combined with concerted conservation and restoration policies – provides the greatest opportunities for reducing land demand. Our study illustrates a method for identifying municipalities where land-sparing policies are most likely to succeed, and those where further effort is needed to overcome constraints such as land tenure insecurity, lack of access to technical advice, labour constraints, and non-compliance with environmental law.
Highlights
Brazil is a megadiversity country with more tropical forest than any other, and is a leading agricultural producer
We focus on Brazil, a country of exceptional global importance for both biodiversity conservation and agriculture, but the methods used here could be adapted for any region with adequate data, and could be adapted to analyse other metrics such as carbon storage and emissions
Our results underline the considerable technical potential for land sparing in Brazil, in line with other recent work, and highlight the importance of understanding and addressing a range of social and economic constraints[2,3,34,35]
Summary
Brazil is a megadiversity country with more tropical forest than any other, and is a leading agricultural producer. The biophysical and technical potential to spare land for nature in this way is well-established[2] This is the case in Brazil, a megadiversity country which supports more tropical forest than any other, and which is among the world’s leading producers of beef, soybeans, sugarcane and other commodities. Land-sparing policies must deliver two concurrent outcomes – conserving native vegetation and increasing yields – and to do so will typically need to create linkages between these outcomes. Such policies are more likely to succeed when certain enabling conditions are in place (Table 1)[5]. Where unavailable: less potential for dissemination of new practices and technologies; such areas could be targeted to improve knowledge exchange through farmer networks or civil society support
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