Converting Brazil's pastures to cropland: An alternative way to meet sugarcane demand and to spare forestlands

Brazil seeks to rapidly increase its agricultural production to meet future demands, especially for sugarcane, which is an agricultural commodity and a biofuel source. In this paper, we explore how to achieve this increase without compromising existing forestlands. We propose that it is possible to substantially expand sugarcane production in Brazil while avoiding further environmental losses and the indirect land use changes often associated with them, such as deforestation. This task could be accomplished by converting existing pasturelands with agricultural potential into cropland. A great deal of pastureland exists in Brazil. Thus, we addressed the following questions in this study: (1) where are the most suitable pasturelands for sugarcane located geographically and (2) what potential do these pasturelands have for sugarcane production regarding their physical suitability and other significant factors, such as infrastructure availability and socioeconomic factors. We conducted a land suitability analysis using a spatial location model based on multicriteria decision-making and geographic information systems (GIS) to identify the cultivated pasturelands most suitable for conversion to sugarcane production in Brazil. “What if” scenarios were built to determine how changes in the subjectively derived weights of the priority criteria would modify the spatial distribution of the suitability classes relative to the MCDA model and demonstrate the robustness of the crop suitability assessment. The most suitable pastureland areas for conversion to sugarcane production were predominantly located in Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Paraná, Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso and Pará. These zones have large contiguous areas of pasture with moderate and high agricultural potentials for sugarcane production. The total estimated area of cultivated pasturelands with moderate or high suitability for sugarcane production was 50 million hectares, which is much larger than the area currently used for sugarcane production in Brazil.