Public land grabbing, concomitant with hinterland colonization and agrarian reform programs, translocated millions of rural migrants into remote regions of Brazil, most recently to the Amazonian forest domain. Despite state-of-the-art command-and-control and remote sensing monitoring systems in Brazil, effective law enforcement in a country of ∼8.5 million km² remains a huge challenge, and particularly difficult in times of lenient central-government environmental policies. Cropland and pasture expansion is the most important factor in land use change in Brazil, and the leading driver of primary habitat conversion worldwide. This essay discusses the most likely business-as-usual agricultural frontiers in Northern and Central Brazil to make room for new farmland: the MaToPiBa region in the transitional Cerrado-Caatinga biogeographic zone; the northernmost Cerrado areas of Amapá; and the opening-up of Indigenous Lands to industrial scale agriculture. We discuss the origins, recent developments and implications to conservation of these new agricultural frontiers.

公共土地掠夺，伴随着腹地殖民化和土地改革计划，将数百万农村移民转移到巴西的偏远地区，最近转移到亚马逊森林地区。尽管巴西拥有最先进的指挥控制和遥感监测系统，但在一个面积约 850 万平方公里的国家有效执法²仍然是一个巨大的挑战，在中央政府环境政策宽松的时代尤其困难。农田和牧场扩张是巴西土地利用变化的最重要因素，也是全球主要栖息地转变的主要驱动力。本文讨论了巴西北部和中部最有可能为新农田腾出空间的常规农业前沿：过渡 Cerrado-Caatinga 生物地理区的 MaToPiBa 地区；阿马帕最北端的塞拉多地区；以及向工业规模农业开放原住民土地。我们讨论了这些新农业前沿的起源、最近的发展和对保护的影响。