BMBF: Carbon sequestration, biodiversity and social structures in Southern Amazonia: models and implementation of carbon-optimized land management strategies

Land use, land use changes, and deforestation are responsible for almost 80 % of the national greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil. The dimension of these changes in land use can be seen by simply having a glance out of the window flying over Mato Grosso, Brazil's third largest state. Within a few decades, “unproductive“ shrubland became a wide-ranging, sophisticated, and globalized agriculture comprising a quarter of the corn, one-third of the soybean and half of the cotton cultivation areas in Brazil. Furthermore, approx. one-eighth of Brazilian cattle are raised in Mato Grosso. At the COP 15 conference in Copenhagen in 2009, Brazil announced its intention to reduce almost 40 % of its greenhouse gas emissions, with a focus on the agricultural sector. For this purpose special funding programs were launched in recent years to enable a fast change to low-carbon land-use, so-called integrated systems as well as improvement of range land.

Hohenheim's subproject in CarBioCial researched the effectiveness of the current funding programs in Mato Grosso and other possible strategies for a “land-saving“ intensification of agricultural production.

First, extensive focus groups and farmer surveys were conducted and the complex decision-making situation related to integrated systems and restoration of range land were recorded in detail. Second, the collected data were evaluated with statistical methods and processed for further modeling in bioeconomic simulations. Third, the parameterization and scenario formulation of the simulation models was carried out together with Brazilian research partners and experts from professional agricultural organizations.

Referring to the bioeconomic simulation results on climate-relevant policy measures we found that although the conditions of subsidized credits for integrated farm production systems are very favorable for farmers, there is currently a limited demand for low-carbon systems. Moreover, the spatial agglomeration of agricultural activities, institutional arrangements in land-rental markets as well as non-economic and cultural aspects of farm managers play a major role. Against this background, the reduction of bureaucratic barriers when applying for credit and more applied research together with demonstration experiments are crucial for achieving the emission reduction targets announced by the Brazilian government.

The farm-level data as well as the spatial-econometric land-use analysis created in Hohenheim's subproject are probably the most comprehensive regional data sets in Brazil. Our research provides, for the first time, a comprehensive overview of adoption and diffusion of integrated farm production systems in Mato Grosso. Results have been incorporated in several projects and studies undertaken elsewhere, for example EMBRAPA, IFAD, and University of California – Berkeley.