ABSTRACT

Brazil’s Atlantic Forest is a biodiversity hotspot. Efforts to restore the forest must address the tradeoffs facing family farmers. In this paper, we combine literature review and empirical analysis to evaluate the ways in which an agroecological practice – Management Intensive Grazing (MIG) – can contribute to sustainable intensification in southern Brazil. Our results show that farmers adopting MIG obtained, in general, better economic and environmental performance, but did not completely renounce the use of external inputs. Forest cover appears to have increased since the promotion of MIG and agroecology in the region and pasture area decreased, therefore, benefiting forest conservation.

摘要

巴西的大西洋森林是生物多样性的热点。恢复森林的努力必须解决家庭农民面临的权衡问题。在本文中，我们结合文献综述和实证分析来评估农业生态实践（管理集约放牧）可以促进巴西南部可持续集约化的方式。我们的结果表明，采用MIG的农民总体上在经济和环境方面表现更好，但并未完全放弃使用外部投入。由于MIG的推广以及该地区和牧场地农业生态的减少，森林覆盖率似乎有所增加，因此有利于森林保护。