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A large breadth of literature has attempted to identify the factors that contribute to the high deforestation rates in the region, especially in the Brazilian rainforest.
Among the main ones are: market-driven agribusiness growth, expansion and modernization of traditional cattle ranching, slow growth of peasant agriculture,
logging in forest frontiers, resurgence of agro-extractive economies Pacheco et al., 2011, tax codes, fiscal incentives, interstate migration, monetary inflation, land
prices, monetary policy, land tenure legislation, commodity price supports, forest reserve laws, and monitoring policies and devices from the early 1970s and 1980s
The Amazon Initiative Management Team, 2007. Below we discuss some of these drivers that have an impact on ecosystems services and food security, namely
agricultural expansion and intensification, cattle ranching, demand for biofuels and illicit crops cultivation and road infrastructure construction.
6.1.1 Deforestation for agricultural expansion and intensification
South America has been experiencing a significant expansion of land for agriculture, which was export-driven, ever since the 1980s Kastnera et al., 2012.
In the Amazon, land cleared for agriculture constitutes the biggest sources of net GHG emissions Galford et al., 2010. For instance, Galford et al. 2010 calculated
that by converting natural vegetation and pasture for row-crop agriculture the GHG emissions in Mato Grosso in Brazil averaged annually 179 Tg CO2-e; i.e., over half
of the typical country´s fossil fuel emissions. Moreover, slash-and-burn agriculture and, to a lesser extent, mulching increase further soil emissions of methane, nitric
oxide and nitrous oxide Davidson et al., 2008. Intensive use of fire for preparing land for agriculture and the leakage of this fire often degrade any surrounding
remaining forests, thereby pushing towards an eco-climatic ‘tipping point’ into a more degraded scrub system Nepstad et al., 2008.
Brazil has been several times criticized for expanding agriculture to the Amazon, which accounts for 49 of the country´s biome Contini, 2011. Brazil´s “Arc of
Deforestation” occurs along the southern and eastern fringes of the Amazon Basin, especially around road axes where pasture degradation, soybean cultivation
expansion, and slash-and-burn agriculture are noticed CELOS, 2006. Between 2001 and 2004, the direct conversion of forest to cropland in the Brazilian Amazon
exceeded 540,000 ha. These trends date back to the late 1960s when the Government of Brazil promoted the invasion of Amazonian forests for infrastructure
construction, sponsoring colonization projects, subsidizing rural credit and giving
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tax breaks. Towards the mid-1990s, agricultural activities in Brazil´s Amazon grew at higher annual rates than in the rest of the country because it was seen as a “new
frontier”, which led to an increase of forest clearing Simon and Garagorry 2005. For example, Galford et al. 2010 indicate that croplands more than doubled from
2001 to 2006 covering about 100,000 km
2
and that new double-cropping intensification occurred on over 20 of croplands in the state of Matto Grosso.
There has also been a rapid conversion of forests to agriculture through land development and colonization towards the eastern slopes of the Andes within the
upper Amazon basin of Ecuador Pichon, 1997. Soil quality, plot size, land tenure security, road infrastructure quality, settlement duration, household education,
family labor availability, modern input and off-farm employment participation seem to have significantly affected land clearing and subsequent land-use changes in this
area CELOS, 2006. In the Amazon region, agricultural expansion has also been associated with soybean
cultivation and therefore forest clearing Barreto et al., 2005, or a replacement of already deforested land or pastures Barona et al., 2010; Brown et al., 2005; Lapola
et al., 2010. However, it is important to mention that due to the high costs of using adequate technological equipment, farmers would normally use after deforestation
the land for rice farming or cattle ranching for the first one-two years and then for soybean cultivation Lima et al., 2011. Hence, it is difficult to assess the exact
extent to which deforestation has occurred as a consequence of soybean production expansion, since clearing may have been spawned by other activities farming with
other crops or cattle ranching Brandão et al., 2005; Goldemberg and Guardabassi, 2009; Lima et al., 2011. Figure 14 shows that deforestation rates have been far
greater than soybean expansion rates, while the role of soybean cultivation has been increasing in the past years.
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Figure 14. Soybean expansion in the Brazilian Amazon, 1991-2005 Source: Mongabay 2008, based on data from Government of Brazil
Notwithstanding, it is important to note that the interactions between deforestation, expansion of pastures and soybean cultivation are largely affected by
land use and tenure, infrastructure development, commodity prices, subsidies and policies. For example, demand for soybean leads to pasture lands to become more
expensive croplands, and thus cattle ranching moving into forestlands. The availability of land at low prices, on the other hand, favors agriculture in extensive
systems. Between 1996 and 2004, soybean production increased with 123 in the Southern
Cone of South America –including Bolivia FAO, 2007. Soybean production reached 60 million t year
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and the crop was grown in more than 22 million ha solely in Brazil Hecht et al 2012. Production increased from 3 million to 17 million t
between 1998 and 2008 in Mato Grosso Brazil Hecht, 2012
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. This involved the replacement of other crops and pastures, but also forest clearings FAO, 2007. For
instance, more than 10 of the clearings in the Brazilian Amazon are related to soybean cultivation, mostly in the “Arc of Deforestation” Hecht, 2012. Morton et al.
2006 further indicated that forest clearing for cropland was correlated to international soybean market prices. Arima et al. 2011 estimated that a 10
reduction of soybean cultivation in old pasture areas would have decreased deforestation up to 40 in Brazil’s Amazon.
However, the debate on the impacts of the increasing soybean production in Latin America has gone even further than environmental damage e.g. deforestation or
pollution due to use of pesticides and economic growth, touching upon aspects of food security. Where soybean including soybean oil is used for human food and
does not prejudice the cultivation of staple crops, it has potential to improve nutrition. However, the potential of soybean to improve food security in the Amazon
has yet to be analyzed. The relationship between food security and agricultural intensification has also
been the subject of debate in the literature. While conventional wisdom postulates that the intensification of agricultural activities may bring efficiency in production
through the introduction of machinery and technology and increase the possibility of feeding a continuously increasing population, more recent studies talk about the
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In Brazil, soybean has been at the top of the countrys commodity exports, requires intensive land use, and depends on external inputs and mechanization for cultivation and harvest in the Amazon.
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role of smallholder farms in ensuring global food security, compared to large, commercial farms, according to the “paradox of the scale”, where “small and
diversified farms rather than large monocultures show greater productivity per area”. Moreover, the nowadays food security problem is more an issue of food
distribution and usage e.g. food waste than of food production or land availability Tscahrnkte et al., 2012, thereby indicating that attributing merits of achieving
food security to increased, large-scale production is a rather reductionist view. In the Amazon basin, intensification of agriculture has been accompanied by
increased mechanization and a change in land tenure patterns replacement of small holdings with large holdings. Morton et al. 2006 estimated that intensive
mechanized agriculture in Brazil´s Amazon grew over 3.6 million ha. Further research has also shown that the expansion of mechanized crops e.g. soybean in
Mato Grosso Brazil has replaced smallholders with large, industrial landowners 10 of farms occupying 82 of productive land, leading to illegal occupation of
land, slave labor and an increase in the number of landless people and urban poor in the last decade Bickel and Marteen Dros, 2003.
Last but not least, analyzing aspects of low-carbon agriculture and forest conservation in the Amazon, Soares-Filho et al. 2012 indicated that intensification
of agriculture may come at a cost to the environment. This is because croplands will release significant amount of both nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizers and
organic matter, and could pollute agro-ecosystems by releasing nitrites, nitrates and pesticides into water streams.
6.1.2. Deforestation for cattle ranching Cattle ranching and pastures development which occupies more than 70 of
deforested area together with smallholder shifting agriculture are the major drivers of deforestation in Brazil´s Amazon Hecht et al 2012. For instance research
argues that around 45 of direct deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is attributable to cattle farming, while crop expansion especially soybean is
responsible for only 15 of total deforestation Morton et al., 2006; Nepstad et al., 2009.
Cattle doubled between 1990 and 2002 Kaimowitz et al., 2005, and today Brazil’s cattle herd in the Amazonia sums over 74 million about 13 of the total for the
country.
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Figure 15 Cattle ranching in Brazil’s forests UNEP, 2009
Invasion of Amazon’s forest in Brazil has also occurred as a perverse effect of monoculture expansion e.g. soybean in the Cerrado, displacing the cattle industry
into Brazil´s Amazon CIAT, 2012. Furthermore, cattle ranches and crop fields have replaced forest along the roads especially the Trans-Amazon highway,
thereby removing valuable timber from the remaining forest. As mentioned before, data for the other countries sharing the Amazon is rather
scarce and outdated. An ACTO document dating back from 1997 argued that in the Department of Caquetá Colombia’s Amazon, approximately 2 million hectares of
primary forests were cleared out for grazing, secondary forests and high- productivity crops at the beginning of the 1990s. In the case of Ecuador, the land
surface dedicated to pastures is larger than the one for crops around 82.5, livestock farming being the second most important productive activity in the
country after petroleum production, despite the negative impacts this activity has on the already fragile soils ACTO 1997.
6.1.3 Deforestation for biofuels and illicit crops
