Abstract
The expansion of agricultural frontiers in Brazil has caused substantial changes in land use and land cover. This research aims to analyze the space-time dynamics of soybeans and cattle production in the Brazilian territory during the period 1991–2015. The spatial analysis adopted the following procedures: (a) The change vector from the annual calculation of the midpoint of production; (b) mapping of the growth and acceleration rates of the two productions, and (c) mapping of the correlation between the time series of soybean and cattle. The results showed high rates of growth and acceleration for soy production in the South, Central-West and Matopiba regions. The growth acceleration rate identified the long-term deviations that characterized the effective soybean and cattle expansion areas. The results demonstrated the effects of Brazil’s soy moratorium contained soybean expansion into the Amazon region. However, as a side effect, the soybean production replaced cattle production in the savanna region, which in turn, migrated to the Amazon rainforest. Therefore, the present study highlights the importance of public policies that comprehensively understand the spatial-temporal dynamics of Brazilian agriculture to promote sustainable land-use practices.
Highlights
The growing demand for agricultural products has caused commercial expansion in emerging countries
The present research innovates in the soybean-cattle substitution analysis from the spatial distribution of the temporal correlation between the production time series
The temporal correlation map synthesizes the spatiotemporal dynamics of soybean and cattle production in Brazil, which expands in a coupled way to the regions of savannah and Amazonian forest
Summary
The growing demand for agricultural products has caused commercial expansion in emerging countries. Since 2002, China has increased imports of raw materials and food from Latin America. This region has become the most significant food exporter, with considerable growth in production, overcoming sustained consumption growth [1]. In this context, Brazil stands out because it has vast reserves of natural resources and a vocation in the production of primary commodities [2]. The soybean production has an international market composed of four main players, three producers (the United States, Brazil, and Argentina), and a large importer (China). More than 42% of energy is renewable and the main of its liquid biofuels used are ethanol and biodiesel, in which almost 81.3% of biodiesel production comes from soybean oil [7]
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