Sustainable Agricultural Intensification and the Nexus in Brazil (SAIN)

巴西是有关粮食安全、粮食生产以及开发生产方法的必要性的国际辩论的重要参与者，这些生产方法应尽量减少气候影响、土地使用变化以及热带森林和生物多样性的丧失。这些有时相互竞争的目标，特别是某些形式的畜牧生产的破坏性作用，使一些评论者认为，有必要进行可持续的农业集约化进程，以便用较少的投入，特别是巴西传统上丰富的土地，生产更多的产出。这一新的可持续集约化议程是英国更广泛的绿色增长辩论的一个重要因素，巴西和其他新兴经济体也越来越多。该项目考虑了巴西需要可持续地加强农业生产，以避免在畜牧业生产和直接和间接土地使用变化（毁林）以及相关的生物多样性和生态系统服务损失方面的地方和全球外部成本的内在权衡关系。这一当务之急的更广泛背景是，全球对粮食生产的需求不断增加，巴西有雄心保持其作为全球粮食商品出口国的卓越地位，同时保持国内粮食安全和社会平等。全球气候变化造成了额外的压力，巴西需要了解影响，并采取渐进或变革性的适应措施，使农业系统能够更好地适应气候情景。该项目采用定量方法来理解这些要素之间的相互作用。我们确定了一些可持续的集约化措施，可以容纳在不同规模的农业系统在巴西的各种环境（或生物群落）。这些措施包括牲畜饲养、草地改良和住房选择。然后，我们开发了一个数值优化模型，该模型描述了不同的生产系统，并使我们能够说明经济和环境权衡的方式，有助于为政策的设计提供信息，例如专注于农业生产和土地利用变化（包括森林砍伐）的温室气体排放。该项目通过模拟每个生物群落的反应，解决了在何处适宜生产和在何处不适宜生产这一更一般性的问题。我们还将能够解决更具争议性的问题，例如减少全球对畜产品的需求（或消费）的后果，这在学术界和政策界越来越多地讨论。该项目结合了苏格兰（SRUC）和巴西（Embrapa）主要农业研究机构的专业知识，以及专注于巴西农业发展和可持续性的重要民间社会组织（Imaflora）。我们的建议建立在科学团队成员之间的现有合作和现有的模型框架的基础上，我们的目标是利用更多的数据和对小农系统的定性研究来改进该模型框架。来自公共、私营和民间社会的一系列不同利益攸关方将参与帮助制定我们的模型结构并对结果发表评论。这项工作借鉴了向农业、畜牧业和供应部农业政策秘书提供证据的现有经验。这一咨询意见被用于巴西农业部门提出的适合本国的缓解行动的政策制定。适合本国的缓解行动是在《联合国气候变化框架》之下作出的自愿减排承诺。最后，该项目将以重要的知识交流为目标，以促进巴西为全球南部其他国家的强化辩论提供信息的雄心。

Brazil is an important player in the international debate about food security, food production and the need to develop production methods that minimise climate impacts, land use changes and loss of tropical forests and biodiversity. These sometimes competing objectives and the damaging role of some forms of livestock production in particular, have led some commentators to suggest that a process of sustainable agricultural intensification is necessary to produce more outputs from less inputs, especially land, which has traditionally been abundant in Brazil. This new sustainable intensification agenda is an important element of a wider green growth debate in the UK and increasingly in Brazil and other emerging economies. This project considers the nexus of trade-offs inherent in the need for Brazil to sustainably intensify agricultural production to avoid local and global external costs in terms of greenhouse gas emissions from livestock production and direct and indirect land use change (by deforestation) and associated loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. The wider context for this imperative is the increasing global demand for food production and Brazil's ambition to maintain its pre-eminent status as a global food commodity exporter, while maintaining domestic food security and social equality. Global climate change creates an additional stressor, with a need for Brazil to understand impacts and to make incremental or transformative adaptations to allow the agricultural systems to be more resilient to climate scenarios. The project adopts a quantitative approach to understanding the interaction between these elements. We identify a number of sustainable intensification measures that can be accommodated within farming systems of different scale across the variety of Brazilian environments (or biomes). These measures include livestock feeding, grassland improvement and housing options. We then develop a numerical optimisation model that describes different production systems and allows us to illustrate the economic and environmental trade-offs in a way that helps to inform the design of policies such as those focused on greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production and land use change (including deforestation). The project addresses the more general question of where production is appropriate and where it is not, by modelling the responses in each biome. We will also be able to address more contentious issues such as the consequences of reducing global demand (or consumption) for livestock products, which is increasingly discussed in academic and policy circles. The project combines expertise from key agricultural research institutions in Scotland (SRUC) and Brazil (Embrapa), and a key civil society organisation (Imaflora) focussed on agricultural development and sustainability in Brazil. Our proposal builds on an existing collaboration between the scientific team members and an existing model framework that we aim to improve using additional data and qualitative research of smallholder systems. A range of different stakeholders from the public, private and civil society will be involved to help develop our model structure and comment on results. The work builds on existing experience of providing evidence to the Secretary for Agricultural Policy for the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (SPA/MAPA). This advice has been used for policy development for Brazil's offer as Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) from the agricultural sector. NAMAs are voluntary emissions reduction commitments to be offered under the United Nations Framework on Climate Change. Finally the project will target significant knowledge exchange to facilitate Brazil's ambition to inform the intensification debate in other countries in the global south.