Year of publication 1998

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Author MERLE D. FAMINOW, STEPHEN A. VOSTI;Animal Production and Health Division

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Product type Book (stand-alone)

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Edition 1

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Synopsis (short abstract) Cattle production in the Brazilian Amazon has ignited one of the most visible and vocal environmental debates of the past decade, amid fears that the Amazon could swiftly disappear unless there was rapid change in attitudes and policies. The high rates of deforestation have been linked to environmental problems ranging from localized degradation of land through to global implications such as climate change. Although there are quite a few land uses in the Amazon, the predominance of pasture has d rawn the ire of many environmentalists who say that cattle production is a bad deal; that the destruction of the largest remaining tropical rain forest to produce beef is not warranted by low productivity and questionable sustainability. In the case of the Amazon, deforestation itself is often taken as prima facie evidence of poor land use, partly from the viewpoint that preservation of tropical forest is fundamental to the prevention of global climate change but also from a feeling that an y agricultural use of the Amazon is doomed to eventual failure (Fearnside, 1997). A growing literature tries to identify the external and internal drivers of deforestation, with most attention focussed on the role played by external factors such as regional development subsidies and macroeconomic policies. However, less well recognized is that production systems themselves might be important factors in forest clearing. In this paper we try to emphasize both internal and external drivers. We do n ot accept the notion that deforestation itself is, prima facie, necessarily bad because of the role that agricultural production can play in economic growth and poverty alleviation, and the potential for production-system modifications that are environmentally-friendly. Widespread poverty and economic stagnation over the past several decades, in Brazil and in neighbouring countries that share the Amazon, are pressing concerns that must be juxtaposed against the environmental consequences of Amazon exploitation (Psacharopoulos et al., 1995). The limited empirical evidence from colonization of the Brazilian Amazon suggests that human development indicators in the region have generally improved over time and that hard work by colonists is often, but not always, rewarded with increased wealth (Haller et al., 1996; Schneider, 1995). For many of the Amazon's rural colonists, the alternative is landless misery in rural areas elsewhere or deprivation in the slums on the margins of cities. Therefore, we think it helpful to frame the main issues of Amazon development in terms of a “critical triangle” of goals: sustainability, growth and poverty alleviation (Vosti and Reardon, 1997). Trade-offs clearly exist, which underlie some of the policy choices taken or not taken in Amazon development. For example, poverty alleviation through Amazon migration was an explicit goal of the Brazilian Government during the 1970s (Schmink and Wood, 1992). The objective of this paper is to stand back and highlight critical policy links for cattle production in the tropical forests of Western Amazonia. We take the perspective that the conversion of forest to pasture in the Brazilian Amazon is the result of a wide range of internal and external factors, and that indignation about subsidies and land speculation among large-scale ranchers has diverted too much attention away from other important issues of land use in the Amazon. Without diminishing the importance of the many environm ental issues that have received widespread attention, we also suggest that the human consequences of Amazon development (economic growth and poverty alleviation) and their links to environmental sustainability have not enjoyed adequate consideration. Potential micro and macro policy levers, that might improve the performance of the livestock sector in the Amazon, have received scant attention outside the research activities of a few agricultural research bodies.

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Language English

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