Towards Efficient Land Use in Brazil

The report argues that Brazil's historical land abundance led to a misallocation of resources and land-intensive agricultural models. However, it demonstrates that productivity gains can be achieved without further deforestation by converting degraded pastures to crops and improving technology dissemination, credit access, and infrastructure. It highlights the success of the PPCDAm and DETER system in reducing Amazon deforestation but warns of new challenges, such as smaller-scale clearings and deforestation shifting to areas outside the Amazon and around protected zones.

• Brazil has significant physical potential to increase agricultural production and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by converting degraded pasturelands into crops; specifically, there are over 40 million hectares of degraded pastureland outside the Amazon suitable for sugarcane production, which represented more than 65% of total Brazilian cropland in 2006.
• Historical policies and institutions based on land abundance created a massive misallocation problem, where agricultural productivity varies substantially within and across regions, suggesting that growth can be achieved through productivity increases without compromising environmental preservation.
• The Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (PPCDAm), launched in 2004 and supported by the DETER satellite system, successfully reduced the Amazon deforestation rate from 2.7 million hectares in 2004 to approximately 460 thousand hectares in 2012.
• Recent Amazon deforestation patterns have shifted toward smaller clearings, potentially to evade the DETER system, which cannot detect deforestation of areas smaller than 25 hectares.
• Deforestation is increasingly occurring around protected areas; while clearings inside protected territories account for less than 10% of total annual Amazon deforestation, the share of deforestation occurring within 10 kilometers of protected areas rose from 15% to 24% between 2002 and 2011.
• Agricultural productivity in Brazil is hindered by several factors: poor transport infrastructure (ranked 77th out of 148 countries by the WEF in 2014), inefficient land rental markets due to insecure property rights, and barriers to the dissemination of new technologies like the Direct Planting System (DPS).
• Access to credit significantly impacts productivity, with about 20% of regional variation in Brazilian agricultural productivity associated with credit availability, although such financial resources must be carefully managed to avoid increasing deforestation rates.
• The 2012 Federal Law nº 12,651 (the new Forest Code) and the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) provide the framework for protecting native vegetation on private lands, but effective implementation remains challenged by uncertainties regarding enforcement.

APA

Climate Policy Initiative (2015). Towards Efficient Land Use in Brazil. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/towards-efficient-land-use-in-brazil/

Chicago

Climate Policy Initiative. Towards Efficient Land Use in Brazil. 2015. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/towards-efficient-land-use-in-brazil/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Climate Policy Initiative |title=Towards Efficient Land Use in Brazil |date=1 September 2015 |url=https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/towards-efficient-land-use-in-brazil/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{climatepolicyinitiative2015towards, author = {{Climate Policy Initiative}}, title = {{Towards Efficient Land Use in Brazil}}, institution = {Climate Policy Initiative}, year = {2015}, month = sep, url = {https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/towards-efficient-land-use-in-brazil/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }