Doctoral Dissertation Research: Impacts of Mechanized Agriculture on Smallholders and Landscapes in the Central Amazon Basin

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This doctoral dissertation research project will examine the social and environmental implications of smallholder displacement by mechanized soy farming for an important agricultural frontier in the central Amazon Basin. Mechanized soybean farming has recently crept towards the Amazon Basin, and there is growing concern about the consequences of this expansion on the rainforest. Past research generally has focused on environmental impacts, namely deforestation via direct encroachments and indirect land-use change at a regional scale. As a result, less is known about the welfare impacts of soybean expansion or about more localized and nuanced land-change outcomes, particularly those associated with smallholder displacement. The doctoral student will focus on social and environmental processes stemming from such displacements in the central Amazon near the city of Santarem. He will conduct research that seeks to describe the circumstances under which such displacements occurred, such as whether land was sold at fair market value or was transferred without adequate compensation via coercion. The student also will address land changes associated with soybean expansion in the central basin. To this end, he will study the conversion of primary and secondary rainforests on properties transferred from smallholders to soybean interests, and he will examine the deforestation occurring in new frontiers created by the in-migration of smallholders from areas of soybean consolidation. Research methods will include a survey of smallholders in order to describe the process of land transfer and to ascertain their destination choices upon land transfer to soybean interests as well as analyses of remotely sensed imagery to determine land-change impacts.This project will address social processes and complex interactions involving multiple agents and their subsequent impacts on the Amazon landscape. The project will contribute to development of land-change science, which has been long dominated by a paradigm focused on land managers acting in isolation. This project will help expand this paradigm by showing how multiple land-change outcomes occurring on properties sold and on newly acquired holdings can result from a single land sale, and it can describe how land change occurs as a result of multiple agents and social processes impacted by power relations. Project results should have policy implications, because little is known about the welfare effects of soybean mechanization, particularly with respect to smallholders. Information generated by this project should contribute to policy debates regarding ways to balance development and the environment in the Amazon. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this project will provide support to enable a promising student to establish an independent research career.