IRFP: Agroecology in Practice: Agrarian Reform, Ecological Sustainability and Social Equality in Brazil

国际研究奖学金计划使美国科学家和工程师能够在国外进行9至24个月的研究。该计划的奖项为联合研究提供了机会，并利用国外独特或互补的设施，专业知识和实验条件。该奖项将支持Jennifer Gardner博士与Jose Scaramuzza博士在巴西马托格罗索联邦大学进行为期15个月的研究。而且更好地了解农业生态管理在提高粮食生产可持续性方面的潜力。这个混合方法的研究项目借鉴了农业生态学和政治生态学的学科来衡量环境，农业和社会成果的小农土地改革定居点在巴西的塞拉多地区。这一广阔的生物群落是一个动态的争论点，争论的焦点是各种不同的农业生产模式。近几十年来，塞拉多已成为工业化农业的中心，特别是大豆生产，威胁到其原生草原和森林生态系统。然而，基层社会运动，如O Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra（MST -农村无地工人运动），也已成为该地区的重要行动者，向政府施加压力，要求更渐进地分配土地所有权，并建立土地改革定居点。这些定居点代表了一种日益增长的反趋势，有可能为生态可持续和社会公正的粮食系统的广泛发展提供信息。虽然MST的国家领导层促进基于农业生态学的生产，但在MST农场采用这些做法是复杂和多变的。该项目是对马托格罗索州几个土地改革定居点的比较分析，结合了农民调查、定性访谈、农场植物和土壤取样以及二级数据分析的数据。主要目标是了解：在马托格罗索州的MST定居点内和定居点之间，谁在使用农业生态实践耕作，为什么？生态农业做法如何在MST定居农场出现，如何维持？这些农业系统对生态效率有什么影响？正在使用生态系统生态学的标准指标评估效率，包括单位面积生产力，能量投入以及氮，磷和钾的营养物质平衡。这项研究将增加对土地改革定居点替代耕作系统潜力的了解，以在生态受到威胁的塞拉多可持续地生产粮食。这项工作正在推进土地利用和可持续性研究的跨学科方法，并解决了一个重要问题：在什么条件下可以复制或扩大这些替代系统？最后，通过这个项目，PI正在马托格罗索联邦大学和康奈尔大学之间建立机构联系，为未来的研究合作奠定基础。

The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.This award will support a fifteen-month research fellowship by Dr. Jennifer Gardner to work with Dr. Jose Scaramuzza at the Federal University of Mato Grosso, Brazil.There is growing recognition of agriculture's contribution to global environmental degradation, but also greater understanding of the potential for agroecological management to improve the sustainability of food production. This mixed-methods research project draws on the disciplines of agroecology and political ecology to measure the environmental, agricultural, and social outcomes of smallholder agrarian reform settlements in the Cerrado region of Brazil. This extensive biome is a dynamic site of contention over very different models of agricultural production. The Cerrado has become a center for industrial agriculture in recent decades, particularly soybean production, threatening its native grassland and forest ecosystems. Yet grassroots social movements, such as O Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST -- the Rural Landless Workers' Movement), have also become important actors in the region, pressuring the government for more progressive distribution of land ownership and establishing land reform settlements. These settlements represent a growing countertrend that can potentially inform widespread development of food systems that are ecologically sustainable and socially just. Though the MST's national leadership promotes production based on the science of agroecology, adoption of these practices on MST farms is complex and variable. This project is a comparative analysis of several land reform settlements in Mato Grosso combining data from a farmer survey, qualitative interviews, on-farm sampling of plants and soils, and secondary data analysis. The primary objectives are to understand: Within and among MST settlements in Mato Grosso, who is farming using agroecological practices and why? How do agroecological practices emerge on MST settlement farms and how are they sustained? And, what effects do these farming systems have on ecological efficiency? Efficiency is being assessed using standard metrics from ecosystem ecology including productivity per unit area, energy inputs, and nutrient mass balances for nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. This research will increase knowledge of the potential for the alternative farming systems of agrarian reform settlements to produce food sustainably in the ecologically-threatened Cerrado. This work is advancing interdisciplinary approaches to the study of land use and sustainability and addresses the important question: Under what conditions can these alternative systems be replicated or scaled-up? Finally, through this project, the PI is building institutional ties between the Federal University of Mato Grosso and Cornell University to establish a foundation for future research collaborations.