Agroforestry
Solutions for Rehabilitating
Abandoned Pasture
Land in the Brazilian
Amazon
The Problem
The
6.2 million-km2 Amazon
Basin is the world's
largest remaining
preserve of tropical
rain forest and a
large C pool. By 1988,
however, development
strategies aimed at
settling the landless
poor and integrating
Amazonia into the
Brazilian national
economy had led to
the deforestation
of approximately 23
million hectares (Skole
and Tucker, 1993).
Of the cleared areas,
the dominant land
use was, and continues
to be, low productivity
cattle pasture, over
half of which is thought
to be in some state
of degradation (Serrão
and Toledo, 1990).
Recent
studies indicate that
there are an estimated
20 to 35 million hectares
of abandoned pastures
in the Amazon Basin.
Local farmers and
new migrants to the
Amazon continue to
clear primary forest
for transitory food,
cash crop, and pasture
systems (Fernandes
et al., 1997). Rehabilitating
the productivity of
the abandoned pasture
lands has the potential
to deflect deforestation
pressure from primary
forest, provide for
the well-being of
people in the region,
convert large areas
from sources to sinks
of C, and preserve
the world's largest
undisturbed area of
primary tropical Rainforest.
Central Hypothesis
The
unproductive and abandoned
pasturelands in the
Brazilian Amazon can
be rehabilitated and
their use sustained
via the establishment
and management of
integrated agrosilvopastoral
systems. Such agroforestry
systems are often
more resilient to
biological, environmental
or economic shocks
than traditional pastures,
plantations or single
crop systems (Fernandes
and Matos, 1995).
