Balancing food production and nature conservation in the Neotropical dry forests of northern Argentina

By H. R. Grau, Néstor Ignacio Gasparri, T. Mitchell Aide. 2008

163 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The growing human population and the increase in per capita food consumption are driving agriculture expansion and affecting natural ecosystems around the world. To balance increasing agriculture production and nature conservation, we must assess the efficiency of land‐use strategies. Soybean production, mainly exported to China and Europe, has become the major driver of deforestation in dry forest/savanna ecosystems of South America. In this article we compared land cover patterns (based on satellite imagery) and land‐use and human population trends (based on government statistics) in regions with two contrasting development pathways in the Chaco dry forests of northern Argentina, since the early 1970s. The area (ca. 13 million hectares) includes one of the largest continuous patches of tropical dry forests and has experienced rapid land‐use change. In the region where land use has been driven by government‐sponsored colonization programs, the expansion of extensive grazing has led to a growing rural population, low food production, and widespread environmental degradation. In contrast, in the region dominated by market‐driven soybean expansion, the rural population has decreased, food production is between 300% and 800% greater, and low‐density extensive cattle production has declined over extensive remaining forested areas, resulting in a land‐use trend that appears to better balance food production and nature conservation.

Subfields: General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a0f2b331360dcde1d6c5a8aaed6643962ded00ed

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In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

In Global and Planetary Change

Citations in the corpus

Guest Editorial, part of a Special Feature on The influence of human demography and agriculture on natural systems in the Neotropics Globalization and Land-Use Transitions in Latin America (2008, background): “Do subtropical seasonal forests in the Gran Chaco, Argentina, have a future?”
Do increases in agricultural yield spare land for nature? (2009, background): “Land-sparing is not a panacea for conservation, but our analysis shows that in the past it may have contributed to the maintenance of natural vegetation cover; an assertion that is supported by a small number of empirical studies at regional scales (Barbier & Burgess, 1997; Grau et al., 2008).”
Invasion of glossy privet (Ligustrum lucidum) and native forest loss in the Sierras Chicas of Córdoba, Argentina (2010, background): “As elsewhere, non-native trees cause major ecological and economic problems in Argentina, where they have invaded protected areas in the northwest of the country, as well as remnants of natural Neotropical forests (Grau and Aragón 2000; Zalba and Villamil 2002; Richardson et al. 2008).”
Estimating the world's potentially available cropland using a bottom-up approach (2013, unknown): “Most of this area is used for timber, ﬁrewood and charcoal extraction, and extensive grazing (Grau et al., 2008).”