Brazil's New Green Revolution: Capital, Investment, and Agricultural Expansion

长期以来，巴西亚马逊地区一直被视为维持全球环境平衡的关键，现在也成为世界上发展最快的农业前沿地区之一。自1990年以来，在大豆生产有利条件的带动下，在巴西中西部和北部地区新兴的生产前沿地区，宽英亩农业系统扩大了8万多平方公里。这些地区大豆产量的增长带来了经济效益和环境成本；这个地区作为生产中心将继续发展。这种扩张发生的地点和程度不仅会对更广泛的环境可持续性和粮食供应问题产生巨大影响，而且也会对地方产生巨大影响，因为快速发展的农业县试图在农业的潜在回报与维持健康和可持续的环境之间取得平衡。智力价值：这项研究考虑了巴西农业转型的一个关键方面。重点是资本产生和信贷稀缺在限制和塑造巴西农业增长的位置和范围方面的作用。具体而言，研究人员和资本如何从资本产生的来源重新分配到资本稀缺的边缘地区，以及土地管理者的投资如何受到限制，只能根据过去的回报自筹资金或基于农业期货的点对点交换。当资本可用时，土地管理者如何在多种投资途径之间做出选择，或者，具体地说，他们是否寻求(1)通过两倍（甚至三倍）种植制度来加强已经生产的地块，或者(2)寻找并将新地点的现有牧场或森林转化为农田的问题也得到了解决。这项工作是通过建立在地理学、经济学和移民研究理论基础上的跨学科模型来概念化手头的问题。研究计划包括收集可量化的调查数据和在三个具有战略地位的农业前沿地区进行的定性访谈。调查工作的目的是建立数量上的、人口层面的关系，而定性工作则试图收集关于构成这种关系的过程的更具体的信息。为了设置具有空间和物理结构的响应，该项目通过地理信息系统将现场信息与特定地点的数据联系起来。总之，这项工作的主要智力优点包括：(1)一种创新的、跨学科的概念方法来理解人口及其资源的流动，以及(2)将大面积农民的社会经济调查与基于MODIS卫星图像的数据产品相结合，这些数据产品表明土地利用强度与GIS数据。更广泛的影响：本提案的更广泛影响包括：(1)对三个关键农业前沿的土地集约化区域特定限制进行政策导向评估；(2)研究员（理查兹）的专业成长，包括管理和发展研究项目以及移民研究和调查方法方面的新培训；(3)继续发展一个包括多个美国和巴西机构的科学家的研究网络。该项目由国际科学与工程办公室（OISE）共同资助。

The Brazilian Amazon, long viewed as vital to the maintenance of global environmental balances, has now also become one of the world's most rapidly growing agricultural frontiers. Since 1990, broad-acre agricultural systems, led by favorable conditions for soybean production, have expanded by more than 80,000km² in the emerging production frontiers in Brazil's Center-West and Northern regions. The growth of soybean production in these areas has come with both economic benefits and environmental costs; and this region is poised to continue growing as a production center. Where and to what extent this expansion takes place will have enormous consequences not only for broader scale questions of environmental sustainability and food supplies, but also locally, as rapidly developing agricultural counties attempt to balance the potential returns from agriculture with maintaining a healthy and sustainable environment. Intellectual Merit:This research considers a key aspect of Brazil's agricultural transformation. The focus is on the role of capital generation and credit scarcity in constraining and shaping the location and extent of Brazil's agricultural growth. Specifically, how people and capital are redistributed from sources of capital generation to capital scarce, marginal regions and how land managers' investments are constrained to self-financing on past returns or peer to peer exchanges based on agricultural futures. The question how land managers choose between multiple investment pathways as capital becomes available or, specifically, whether they seek to (1) intensify on already productive parcels through double (or even triple) cropping systems, or (2)seek out and convert existing pastures or forests in new locations to cropland is also addressed. The work is approached by conceptualizing the issue at hand within an interdisciplinary model built on theories from geography, economics, and migration studies. The research plan includes the collection of quantifiable survey data and qualitative interviews conducted in three, strategically-located study agricultural frontier regions. Whereas the survey work aims at establishing quantitative, population-level relationships, the qualitative work attempts to gather more specific information on the processes that underlie this relationship. To set the responses with a spatial and physical structure, the projects links field information to location-specific data through a GIS. In summary, the main intellectual merits of this work include (1) an innovative, interdisciplinary conceptual approach to understanding the movement of people and their resources, and (2) the integration of socioeconomic survey of broad-acre farmers with MODIS satellite image based data products indicating land use intensity with GIS data.Broader Impacts: The BROADER IMPACTS of this proposal comprise (1) a policy oriented evaluation of area specific constraints on land intensification across three critical agricultural frontiers; (2) Professional growth of the Fellow (Richards), which includes administering and developing the research project and new training in migration studies and survey methods; and (3) the continued development of a research network that that includes scientists at multiple US and Brazilian institutions.This project is co-funded by the Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE).