Sustainability Assessment in Soy, Family and Agroforestry Farms: Application of the Rise Tool to the Cerrado

Mark L Miller,Markus Schermer,Michael Löbmann,Stefan Zerbe,Veronika S Zbinden

doi:10.18800/espacioydesarrollo.201902.003

Abstract

Over the last 30 years, extensive areas of Cerrado, the Brazilian savannah, have been converted to export-oriented agribusinesses. The social, environmental and economic impact of such large-scale land-use conversion is massive. To understand whether the current farming development in the Cerrado is sustainable, this study analyzes the sustainability performance of single farms applying the triple bottom line approach. Its aim is to assess the sustainability of soy, family and agroforestry farms. Fifteen farms were analyzed through the indicator-based sustainability assessment tool «RISE». The sustainability scores of RISE themes revealed that soy farms are economically sustainable, while their socio-environmental sustainability degree is rather critical. They scored lower than the other two farm types in all RISE themes except in the «economic viability» and «water use». Family farms and agroforestry are environmentally sustainable according to RISE.The sustainability degree of their social themes is either critical or scarcely positive mainly due to the high number of working hours and the low wage and income level. Looking at the economic sustainability, family farms reached a critical degree and agroforestry farms a barely positive degree. While the difference of sustainability performance between soy farms and the two others is large, it is minimal between agroforestry and family farms. RISE was a valid tool to assess with a moderate amount of data the sustainability performance of highly diverse farm types in the Cerrado.

Highlights

The 2007-2008 global food crisis revealed the instability of the global food system (Clapp & Helleiner, 2012)
Notwithstanding the fact that 40% of the grain production goes to livestock farming and that the main problem of the crisis was how food is accessed rather than produced (ETC Group, 2008), the FAO (FAO, 2009) estimated in 2009 that the global food production would have to rise by 70% by 2050 to feed an additional 2.30 billion people
That optimism may have been partially driven by the massive expansion of crop agribusiness in the Cerrado (Rada, 2013), the largest savannah of South America located in central Brazil, south and east of the Amazon (Ratter, Ribeiro, & Bridgewater, 1997)

Summary

Introduction

The 2007-2008 global food crisis revealed the instability of the global food system (Clapp & Helleiner, 2012). The crisis pushed millions of people into a situation of food insecurity, leading to the eruption of «food riots» in many developing countries. Numerous international initiatives were promoted to expand the global food supply and meet the increasing global demand (Clapp & Helleiner, 2012). Thanks to increased yields due to advanced production methods in agriculture, the FAO (2009) projected with cautious optimism that the goal could be reached if «only» 120 million ha were cultivated in the savannahs of Sub-Saharan Africa and South America. That optimism may have been partially driven by the massive expansion of crop agribusiness in the Cerrado (Rada, 2013), the largest savannah of South America located in central Brazil, south and east of the Amazon (Ratter, Ribeiro, & Bridgewater, 1997)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion