Production and Protection: A First Look at Key Challenges in Brazil

The report proposes a Production and Protection (P&P) strategy for Brazil to reconcile economic growth in agriculture with environmental conservation. It identifies significant within-region productivity gaps in cattle ranching, crop farming, and small-scale agriculture, suggesting that productivity gains can be achieved without further deforestation. Key barriers to these gains include limited access to credit, underdeveloped land rental markets, poor infrastructure, and gaps in technological diffusion. On the protection side, the report highlights the need to combat small-scale Amazon deforestation, enforce the Forest Code on private lands via the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR), and develop market-based incentives for biomes like the Cerrado.

• Brazil's agricultural productivity exhibits substantial variation both across and within regions, indicating that production can be increased through productivity gains without expanding into forested land.
• Amazon deforestation has shifted from large-scale clearings to small increments, likely because the DETER monitoring system cannot detect clearings smaller than 25 hectares.
• The 2012 Forest Code reduced the cost of compliance for landowners and decreased environmental liability by nearly 60%, though over 20 million hectares still require restoration.
• Land rental markets in Brazil are underdeveloped compared to Europe and the US, with less than 5% of agricultural land under lease in 2006, despite evidence that leased land is more productive.
• Poor infrastructure significantly reduces agricultural productivity; for example, transporting a ton of soybean from a leading production municipality to export is nearly three times more expensive than a similar distance in the US.
• In large-scale cattle ranching, the use of lime and rotational grazing are key productivity drivers, with lime usage associated with a 31% difference in productivity between high and low adoption municipalities.
• Small-scale farmers face significant barriers to credit due to a fear of indebtedness, with nearly 44% of those who need credit avoiding it for this reason.
• The Cerrado biome is highly attractive to agricultural producers and has seen extensive clearing, necessitating incentive-based policies like payment for environmental services (PES) because monitoring and law enforcement alone are insufficient.
• The Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) is the primary instrument for enforcing the Forest Code on private lands, though its actual effect on preserving native vegetation is not yet well understood.
• In the North region, cattle ranching expansion has historically come at the expense of the Amazon forest, illustrating a direct tension between production and protection.

APA

Assunção, J., Gandour, C., Hemsley, P., Rocha, R., & Szerman, D. (2013). Production and Protection: A First Look at Key Challenges in Brazil. Climate Policy Initiative. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Production-and-Protection-A-First-Look-at-Key-Challenges-in-Brazil.pdf

Chicago

Assunção, Juliano, Clarissa Gandour, Pedro Hemsley, Romero Rocha, and Dimitri Szerman. Production and Protection: A First Look at Key Challenges in Brazil. Climate Policy Initiative, 2013. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Production-and-Protection-A-First-Look-at-Key-Challenges-in-Brazil.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Assunção |first1=Juliano |last2=Gandour |first2=Clarissa |last3=Hemsley |first3=Pedro |last4=Rocha |first4=Romero |last5=Szerman |first5=Dimitri |title=Production and Protection: A First Look at Key Challenges in Brazil |publisher=Climate Policy Initiative |date=December 2013 |url=https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Production-and-Protection-A-First-Look-at-Key-Challenges-in-Brazil.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{assuno2013production, author = {Assunção, Juliano and Gandour, Clarissa and Hemsley, Pedro and Rocha, Romero and Szerman, Dimitri}, title = {{Production and Protection: A First Look at Key Challenges in Brazil}}, institution = {Climate Policy Initiative}, year = {2013}, month = dec, url = {https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Production-and-Protection-A-First-Look-at-Key-Challenges-in-Brazil.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }